Just 400-500 passengers are travelling by the Samjhauta Express lately, down from 1,200-1,500 in normal times.
CHANDIGARH: The bus from Lahore arrived in Delhi on Tuesday carrying not a single passenger, something unheard of in the nine years since the service was launched. Such is the fear in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks.
“This is not only unprecedented, but shocking as well,” said a senior official posted at the Wagah border in Amritsar. Sada-e-Sarhad (Call of the Border), the bus service former prime minister AB Vajpayee launched on February 19, 1999, by travelling to Lahore on its inaugural run, has never run without passengers. The service was suspended shortly this January after former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.
“But the 45-seater bus has never been without passengers, even though their number keeps wavering,” the official said. “The passenger-less bus shocked us. This indicated the fear and uncertainty among people on both sides of the border,” he added.
The same fear has brought about a steep decline in the number of passengers travelling by Samjhauta Express, between Lahore and Delhi.
Just 400-500 passengers are travelling by the train lately, compared to as high as 1200-1500 in normal times. Evens the volume of trade is far lower than what it was in the pre-Mumbai terror days. A leading Indian businessman, who recently returned from Pakistan, said uncertainty had gripped trade as India had put on hold all trade and commercial dialogue with Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai killings.
Before the attacks in the last week of November, India and Pakistan were keen to develop business, especially from the Attari-Wagah land route, but the present situation had acted as a damper.
The member of the Amritsar Exporter Chamber of Commerce, representing the Indo-Pak trade, said the straining of ties between the two countries was taking a toll on bilateral trade.
An Amritsar-based leading exporter apprehended a slowdown in trade in the coming months as panic has set in among the traders from the across the border.
b_ajay@dnaindia.net
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