Maintaining that final decision on the mercy petition of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru rests with the President,the Centre's Interlocutors on Kashmir today said the issue will have no impact on their final recommendations to the Government. "On the question of Afzal Guru,the final decision obviously rests with the President. We do not wish to comment any further," Head of the three-member team of Interlocutors,Dileep Padgaonkar,told reporters here today. Flanked by the two other Interlocutors - Prof Radha Kumar and M M Ansari - he said,"It (Guru issue) shall have no bearing on the recommendations we are going to make in our final report." He was replying to questions about the Afzal Guru issue and its impact on the Interlocutors' final recommendations on Jammu and Kashmir to the Centre as well as their opinion over the mercy plea. "If you want to ask me my personal opinion,I have said so before and I again reiterate here (that) I am against capital punishment," Padgaonkar said. "However,capital punishment is on the statutory book and son long it is on that book,there is little we can do," he said. "But,I have said that the final decision has to be taken at the highest level". Reiterating their wish to engage separatists on their current visit to the state,the Centre-appointed interlocutors said non-engagement of separatists will however not make any difference to the final report to be submitted to the government. "Will the fact that they (separatists) did not engage with us,make a big difference to the report? The answer is no. It won't. Because we have a fair idea what the factions of Hurriyat Conference and separatists stand for," Dilip Padgaonkar,head of the three-member panel,told reporters. "In our report,we have taken into consideration five points of Hurriyat faction led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and five points of All Party Hurriyat Conference led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq," Padgaonkar said. Padgaonkar,further,said the panel has taken into account the points of separatists and Hurriyat Conference. "We wanted to get a greater elaborations on these points which would have been possible by talking to them," he said. "We are aware about the proposals separatists have made during the past ten years. We are aware of proposals of Yasin Malik of JKLF,proposals of Muslim Conference,Sajjad Lone's Peoples Conference and various other groups of the separatists constituency," Professor Kumar said.
