NEW DELHI: The Government has stalled a proposal by the Border Security Forces (BSF) to remove 40 villages on Kashmir’s border with Pakistan in the Uri-Kupwara sector and relocate them several kilometers inside the check infiltration of Pakistan-trained militants
The proposal was recently placed before the Government as the organizations options of combating the separatist forces are limited.
BSF sources said some of the villages on the Indian side of the border are virtually contiguous with villages on the Pakistani side and there is Constant interaction between people on both sides. The reasons for the Governments hesitation on the proposal are obviously based on the immediate outrage that would be caused all over the ravaged State for uprooting people from their soil The anti-militant operations by the Army BSF and other paramilitary forces apart from being a determined battle against armed fundamentalism have often resulted in Atrocities as well as hardships and harassment of ordinary people.
Under these circumstances the implementation of the BSF proposal can only exacerbate popular resentment against the Government and further dim whatever hopes the Government might be nurturing to bring peace back in the Valley.
The BSF view is that the security needs in the Valley overrode such considerations.
BSF Director General Prakash Singh Said that the mountainous border between Kashmir and Pakistan is such that only “reasonable security” can be maintained unlike the case of Punjab Where “maximum security” is possible
Singh said the force had reached the “optimum” as far as induction of personnel and weaponry were concerned and that the security zone that would be created by the shifting of the villages would facilitate easier detection of infiltrating militants.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 14, 1994
