A highly-placed official said the government is serious about reducing army presence in the Valley because of visible changes in the ground situation.
The Manmohan Singh government has revived talk of troop redeployment/reduction in Jammu and Kashmir, signalling a desire to resume the stalled Indo-Pak peace process.
It is both a gesture to the Valley, which has been rocked by protests over the suspected rape and murder of two women by some army men, and to Pakistan, which is waiting for a sign that India is ready to pick up the threads after a seven-month-long hiatus in bilateral dialogue.
The indication came first from home minister P Chidambaram at a press conference on Friday in Srinagar. He said the government will phase out the presence of army troops from cities and towns across Kashmir. “In the inhabited areas, we believe maintaining law and order is the primary responsibility of the state police,” Chidambaram said. He did not give a timetable, but emphasised, “It is the direction in which we have agreed to move and we will move.”
The refrain was picked up by army chief Deepak Kapoor, who talked of troop reduction and said a decision would be taken by the political authorities after an assessment of the security situation in the state.
A highly-placed official said the government is serious about reducing army presence in the Valley because of visible changes in the ground situation. He said infiltration is vastly reduced, as is violence. This can be interpreted as a sign that Pakistan is genuinely making an effort to turn off the terror tap, he said.
Also, pressure is mounting on India to make a reciprocal gesture to the withdrawal of troops by Pakistan from its side. More than two divisions were moved out earlier this year and sent to the Pak-Afghan border, at the insistence of the US to augment forces fighting al Qaeda groups.
While the Manmohan Singh government’s domestic compulsion is obvious in view of the recent Shopian twin murder, any redeployment/reduction of troops would also be a major confidence building measure in the troubled bilateral relationship with Pakistan. This was part of Musharraf’s four-point formula for peace in Kashmir.
With talk of a PM-Zardari meet in the air as Manmohan Singh prepares to go to Russia next week, Chidambaram’s announcement suggests that the government may be working on a package to make the Indo-Pak dialogue more meaningful when it resumes.
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