NEW DELHI: The government appears to have decided at the highest level to release a number of Kashmiri militants, including Shabir Shah, Abdul Ghani Lone and Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who are in jail and the timing and modalities of the release are being worked out.

North Block sources said that the detainees may even be released before or on October 2. It is possible that the government may release two of these leaders to begin with. The Home Secretary, K. Padmanabhaiah, left for Srinagar last week reportedly on a two-pronged mission. He is expected to confer with the Governor, Gen K. Y. Krishna Rao, and get a ground level assessment of the implications of the release and to make sure that the delamination exercise gets under way again without any hitch.

The Chief Election Commissioner, T. N. Seshan, has already sent his deputy, N. A. Vishwanathan, to represent him ‘on the Delimitation Commission which has staned his work afresh.

Though the release of the militants has been under consideration for many months now, the start of the UN General Assembly in New York has lent a new urgency to the government’s efforts, The release of the main figures of Kashmiri militancy is expected to take the sting out of Pakistan’s offensive in New York, Pakistan, which is slated to speak in the plenary on October 4, has mounted an offensive to mobilize support to bring a resolution on Kashmir in the UNGA.

Since Amnesty International had declared Shabir Shah, who heads the People’s League, as a “’prisoner of conscience,” Pakistan has been able to utilize this for propaganda purposes at recent international conferences, Shah has been in jail for around five years, while Geelani, who heads the JamateIslami and Abdul Ghani Lone, leader of the People’s Conference and four times MLA who is considered the Tohra of Kashmir politics, were arrested at the time of the Hazratbal sige last year, Yasin Malik, chief of the IKLF, was released a few months ago. The release of the detainees would indicate a sense of confidence on the part of the government to handle the situation on the ground. In the last few weeks the government has taken several steps to show that it is serious about the restoration of the political process to culminate in elections.

Article extracted from this publication >>  September 30, 1994