Centre's envoy Dineshwar Sharma reaches Kashmir

SRINAGAR: Dineshwar Sharma, the Centre's special representative for Kashmir, today reached here for a five-day visit to the state during which he will hold talks with various stakeholders, officials said.

Sharma, a former chief of the Intelligence Bureau, will spend three days in the Kashmir Valley and two days in Jammu, where he will hold talks with Governor N N Vohra, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and various delegations, they said.

In Srinagar, he is expected to meet various political leaders, student groups and youths.

Sharma has said he would like to counter false sloganeering and propaganda available online and ensure that youths and students become part of the peace process.

"I do not have a magic wand but my efforts have to be judged with sincerity and not through the prism of the past," he has said.

"I would like to be judged by my actions," he had told PTI from Delhi.

Sharma, who is originally from Bihar and is a Kerala- cadre IPS officer of the 1979 batch, held the country's top- most post for a police officer from 2014 to 2016.

The Joint Resistance Forum, a conglomerate of three separatist organisations -- the hardline and moderate factions of the Hurriyat Conference and the JKLF -- announced earlier this week that they would not meet Sharma and dubbed his appointment a "time-buying tactic" of the Centre.

The National Conference, the state's main opposition party, felt the exercise of meeting Sharma may not yield much result in view of statements by Central leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had flayed talk of Kashmir's autonomy.

The Jammu and Kashmir Assembly had passed a resolution in July 2000 for granting more autonomy to the state within the ambit of the Constitution.