SRINAGAR: Hurriyat leadership in India-held Kashmir remains divided in respect to attending the ‘Eid Milan’ function which will be hosted by the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi.

Chairperson of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), Mirwaiz Maulvi Umar Farooq, has decided to attend the function while Syed Ali Shah Geelani, chairperson of his faction of the APHC, has boycotted the event to register a symbolic protest against Pakistan.

Read: Basit invites Kashmiri leaders to Eid Milan party

“We feel it is important at this juncture to contribute our bit to the dialogue process between Pakistan and India, because we believe that no progress on Kashmir is possible unless these countries come closer to each other for a better understanding,” said Miwaiz.

“We will convey our displeasure to the Pakistani High Commissioner over the omission of Kashmir in the recently issued joint statement in Ufa, Russia,” he added.

Syed Ali Geelani on the other hand has decided to boycott the invitation from the Pakistani High Commission.

“The Pakistani government seems to be in ‘awe’ of India,” said Geelani while explaining his decision to boycott.

“The Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, failed in his moral and diplomatic duty to convey to India that Kashmir is being held at gunpoint,” added Geelani.

Read more: Kashmiri leaders irked by omission of Kashmir from Ufa statement

Geelani is of the opinion that Pakistan’s stand on Kashmir appeared “wavering” and “inconsistent”.

Asiya Andrabi, leader of Dukhtaran-e-Millat hsa also decided to boycott the Eid Milan being hosted by Abdul Basit, the Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi.

Pro-independence Kashmiri leader and chief of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) said that he would convene a meeting of his party members to take a final decision on whether to attend or boycott the ‘Eid Milan’ party by Friday evening.

Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) leader Shabir Shah will attend the Iftar party.

The Pakistani High Commission had earlier invited the resistance Kashmiri leadership for an Iftar party on July 4 but later cancelled it without any explanation.

Reliable sources confirmed that the Pakistani High Commission decided to call off the Iftar party with an apparent aim of not to “annoy” India and help create a “conducive atmosphere” for the meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi.

Earlier in the month, the prime ministers of the two countries met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and BRICS summits, after which the foreign secretaries of both countries issued a joint statement. The statement cautiously avoided mentioning the Kashmir issue.