‘J&K now past stage of uneasy calm’: Army Corps Commander

Srinagar: More than 14 months after the Narendra Modi government at the Centre revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 and Article 35A of the Constitution, Lieutenant General BS Raju, Commander of the Army’s Chinar Corps (XV Corps), said the erstwhile state is now “past the stage of uneasy calm”.

“We have been able to keep the violence level at a threshold…where normal people can continue to do their job… (We) have been able to keep the militant numbers also under a fair amount of control,” Raju was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

He added that infiltration has reduced substantially in the region and a lot of effort has been put in by the ground force such as additional personnel, additional technology” along the LoC. He, however, said that there is “no desire on the part of Pakistan to stop infiltration”.

In June this year, Army Chief General M M Naravane had said the security forces have had a lot of successes in Jammu and Kashmir recently as people there are fed up with militancy and want normalcy to return.

“As far as Jammu and Kashmir or our western neighbour is concerned, we have had a lot of successes in the last one week or ten days. In the last 10-15 days alone more than 15 militants have been killed there,” Naravane had said.

All this, he added, was made possible because of the close cooperation and coordination between all the security forces operating in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. He said a majority of the recent anti-militancy operations were based on information provided by locals which is an indication that they are fed up with militancy and want normalcy to return to the valley.

“Most operations have been carried out on the basis of information provided by locals which goes to show they are also absolutely fed up with militancyand want that the situation should return to normal,” Naravane said.

On August 5, 2019, the BJP government had ended Jammu & Kashmir’s special status in the Indian Union and split the state into two Union Territories.