New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 on a petitioner who sought implementation of Manmohan-Musharraf 4-point formula for resolving the Kashmir imbroglio.
A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli said it is not inclined to entertain the plea filed by Prabhakar Venkatesh Deshpande, an IIT-Bombay graduate, who underlined there cannot be a military solution to the problem.
Deshpande pitched for the so-called formula devised by the former Indian prime minister and ex-president of Pakistan involving "autonomy, joint control, demilitarisation and porous borders" details of which can be further negotiated.
Agra Summit, and why it collapsed
The Agra summit was a historic two-day summit meeting between India and Pakistan which lasted from 14–16 July, 2001. It was organized with the aim of resolving long-standing issues between India and Pakistan.
At this meeting, a proposal was made to drastically reduce nuclear arsenals, and other issues involving the Kashmir dispute, and cross-border terrorism. However, the negotiations broke down and the process collapsed, as result of which the Agra treaty was never signed.
The talks faced a number of obstacles. According to scholar Gaurav Kampani, there were three major reasons for the Indian government's reluctance in accepting Pakistan's assurances at face value:
First, the Vajpayee government did not trust President Pervez Musharraf and the establishment that he represents in Delhi. In India alone, it was widely felt that it was Musharraf who sabotaged joint peace efforts of Pakistan Prime minister Navaz Sharif and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the Lahore Summit in 1999.
Second, India was not satisfied with Pakistan's pledge to halt cross-border infiltrations;
Thirdly, the Indian government had plans for holding regional elections in Kashmir in October 2002. Similarly, Indian leadership considered Musharraf's refusal to give up support to the cross-border insurgency in Kashmir as the reason behind the failure of the summit.
(with inputs from PTI)
