CPI general secretary Sudhakar Reddy: Centre should hold talks with all stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir

Thiruvananthapuram: The Centre should immediately start negotiations with all stakeholders in Kashmir where the situation was becoming ‘worse’ in the last few years, CPI general secretary Sudhakar Reddy said on Sunday.

“We all agree that this issue has to settled within the framework of the Constitution. Art 370 is part of the Constitution…,” he told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram referring to the violence and militant attacks in the border state.

In the last few years, instead of improving, the situation “is becoming worse in the state.” Successive governments were not in a position to understand and find a solution to the problem there, Reddy said.

He said the central government should immediately start negotiations with all stakeholders without ‘false prestige’.

The ‘alienation’ in the state had been to such an extent that only seven percent of the people voted in the recent Srinagar bypolls and in Anantanag, the elections have been postponed indefinitely, he said.

The country should support the “justified demand of Kashmiries for a secular India,” he added.