MHA Officials Quizzed On J&K Situation

Non-committal response to MPs’ request for visit.

Senior Home Ministry officials were non-committal when a parliamentary panel asked if they could travel to Kashmir Valley like Members of the European Parliament did recently.

The officials, including Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla, on Friday briefed the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, chaired by senior Congress leader Anand Sharma, on the situation in the Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. A senior Rajya Sabha MP, who attended the meeting, told The Hindu that most parliamentarians questioned the officials on the prolonged detention of political leaders, including Lok Sabha MP and National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, and sought to know when they would be released. Mr. Abdullah has been detained under the stringent Public Safety Act.

“We asked Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla: ‘You took foreign MPs to Kashmir... When will you let us visit the Valley?’ He said they will look into it later,” the MP said.