All-party team to visit Kashmir on Monday

Srinagar : An all-party delegation will visit Kashmir on Monday to take stock of the ground situation and gauge the public sentiment for finding a way out of the current crisis in the Valley that has claimed over 100 lives since mid-June.

Union Home minister P Chidambaram will lead the delegation, which would have senior Cabinet ministers and leaders of all major political parties, including leaders of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley respectively.

The decision to send the delegation was taken at an all-party held in New Delhi on Wednesday, which was chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and attended by leaders of all major parties, including Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders L.K. Advani and Nitin Gadkari.

The all-party team visit is being looked forward to with anticipation as the parties had decided to visit the trouble-torn places before arriving at any decision on how the crisis can be sailed out of.

However, the J&K government?s imposing a fresh 72-hour curfew ahead of Monday?s visit is being criticized by the state?s main Opposition party, People?s Democratic Party (PDP).

?I hope that the all party delegation will meet common people. The state government is vitiating the atmosphere deliberately. There is no rationale for this curfew,” PDP president Mehbooba Mufti said on Sunday.

Meanwhile, curfew was re-imposed in all the major cities and towns, sparing Baramulla, in the Kashmir Valley on Sunday even as the hardline Hurriyat group decided not to hold any protests on the day.

The prohibitory orders were clamped as a precautionary measure, local administrative officers said.

Three people, who were injured in the alleged firing by security men over the past three days, succumbed to their wounds.

With this, the toll since June 11 touched 102, according to an estimate available with the administration.