NEW DELHI: The Valley entering 40th day of curfew and the internet blackout, P Chidambaram felt it was time to explore the possibility of the Congress, National Conference and even PDP coming together just to stop the situation from “sliding into a chaos”. But the Congress disagreed.
“I’m afraid the way out of the crisis cannot be found by the present government. The Congress, National Conference and, if willing, the PDP must come together to find a solution,” said the former Union minister.
However, terming Chidamabaram’s statement as “indulgence in romanaticism’’, the Congress stated that the party had “no such plan’’ of chasing “idealism’’ without a mandate.
“Today, he (Chidambaram) has expressed his opinion. (But) we’ve also said that unless we have the mandate, we will not meddle in Kashmir affairs. Tomorrow, we may have the mandate who knows, we will go and govern Kashmir and we will show better governance than what is there today,” said Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
This is second time in a row the Congress has distanced itself from the views of its top leaders. First, it took an about-turn to junk former foreign minister Salman Khurshid’s warnings to the Centre against raking the Balochistan issue while Kashmir was bruning. The party rejected his view that the evocation of Balochistan would help Pakistan bring equivalence with Kashmir which could prove costly for India.