Almost four weeks have passed by since the Article 370 was abrogated, but there is no news on when the former chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir – National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah and Peoples Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti - who were put under house arrest on August 4, are going to be set free. After detention, Omar has since been shifted to the Hari Niwas palace while Mehbooba is being held at a guest house in Chesmashahi. Both these places have been declared as subsidiary jails. The family members of the two leaders have met them recently and, according to reports, Mehbooba is agitated while Omar has grown a beard. The detention of the two leaders, the face of pro-India politics in Kashmir, has created a big vacuum, throwing the state open for all kinds of political machinations. In their detention, there was an implicit admission that these leaders have been part of the problem in Kashmir and not the solution. By jailing the mainstream players who have carried the country’s flag on their shoulders for past 70 years, the state administration had reasoned that calm will prevail. Indeed, calm has prevailed, but it is the calm of the graveyard where one fears to venture even during daytime. The centre’s reach out to these two leaders by allowing their relatives to meet them can become the first important step towards restoration of normalcy in Kashmir where tensions and fear prevail in the air, even though restrictions clamped down to prevent any law and order disturbances have been eased out significantly since the past week and there has been a steady improvement in the movement of private vehicles on the roads. Amid claims that schools were being opened and attendance of the state employees was slowly picking up at offices, the government had hoped that normalcy will return with the same speed at which it was shattered earlier this month when the Article 370 was abrogated and Jammu and Kashmir was divided into two union territories. But that was not to be. People are yet to come to terms with shock of their state losing the ‘special status’. They are equally aghast by the manner in which the special status was abrogated. The prevailing political vacuum in the state needs to be filled immediately. Reaching out to Omar and Mehbooba is certainly a significant move to remove the clouds of uncertainty