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Please see #q292248 which should clear up at least the first 2 questions you post.

As for the other two:

while using position controllers can I read the effort at each joint ?

yes, joint state is decoupled from the controller that is being used.

I'm using MoveIt! for a gazebo simulation. I've setup an action server FollowJointTrajectory. which controller should I be using for this ?

I don't understand your question. MoveIt expects a FollowJointTrajectory action server. How exactly did you "setup" one?

ros_control provides the joint_trajectory_controller which also offers a FollowJointTrajectory action server. That is typically used in setups of ros_control that need to be compatible with MoveIt.