The Centre today launched a campaign to manage the optics of the volatile situation in the Kashmir Valley where separatists staged yet another march for ‘azadi’ (freedom) while protesters in Jammu embarked on a ‘jail bharo’ (court arrest) stir to press for their respective, conflicting demands.
Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Information and Broadcasting Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi briefed the heads of the private television channels on the prevailing situation in Jammu and Kashmir, while Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta told reporters that Hurriyat leaders’ march to the United Nations office in Srinagar was a routine one.
Unable to make any headway in initiating talks with the Hurriyat Conference, which has been demanding that the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road be opened for trade and free movement of goods, the government’s information managers have been insisting that while separatist leaders in Kashmir were provoking people against New Delhi, it was Islamabad which was dithering over cross-LoC trade.
For example, Gupta said while the two countries had agreed to open the Srinagar-Muzzaffarbad and Poonch-Rawlakot roads for trade in April 2005, Pakistan was yet to do the requisite follow-up.
Also, while New Delhi had sent a list of 80 members of the chamber of commerce and industries, who would visit Pakistan for exploring possibilities of trade on these routes, a reciprocal list was still awaited.
Government authorities said that when New Delhi had asked for expediting the issue of cross-LoC trade with Pakistan during the foreign secretary-level talks held here last month, “they (the Pakistani side) tried to raise avoidable procedural issues”.
Gupta claimed that a group of senior bureaucrats from New Delhi had visited Salamabad and Chakan-da-bagh — two points where the Customs and trade facilitating centres would have to be set up — for a review of facilities, but nothing had happened on the other side.
To counter the propaganda about the economic blockade of the Kashmir Valley as alleged by the separatists and political leaders, the government claimed that “supplies to and from the Kashmir Valley were normal”.
According to the home ministry, 415 fruit-laden trucks had left the Valley since yesterday, which is four times more than the normal flow.
Likewise, 480 trucks carrying sheep, poultry, LPG and food materials had reached Kashmir during this period.
However, the government has kept mum on the situation in the Jammu region, where the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti has intensified its agitation demanding restoration of the land for Amarnath pilgrimage.
“We are trying to create a conducive atmosphere where a dialogue could be started from both sides,” Gupta said.
