It is welcome that a discussion has begun on pruning the presence of Army troops in civilian areas in the hinterland of Jammu and Kashmir. Excluding paramilitaries, the number of Army soldiers in J&K is said to be in the region of 1.7 lakh. This number includes the soldiers posted along the 740-km Line of Control with Pakistan. The Army went into J&K in the 1990s, at a time when the Valley was engulfed by militancy and terrorism, and the police force of the erstwhile state was not adequately equipped to handle what was then a violent secessionist situation with cross-border ramifications. Stationing soldiers indefinitely to keep a check on civilians is not good for the Army or for the people. With the Union Home Minister claiming “a big reduction” in the number of terrorist incidents, and all statistics pointing to a drop in the number of terrorists as well as terrorist recruitment, the thinning of security forces has to be the logical next step. It has been proposed that the CRPF can fill in for the Army.
The proposal — centred on thinning out the presence of the Rashtriya Rifles, a force raised by the Army specially for counter-insurgency duties in Kashmir — is said to be in an advanced stage of consideration. In the year of its G20 presidency, the move could certainly help Delhi counter the international description of Kashmir as the “world’s most militarised region”. But beyond the optics, the heating up of the Line of Actual Control across sectors at a time the Army has adopted a recruitment plan for a leaner force means that deployment has to be rationalised. Since 2020, when the Ladakh standoff began, the Army has been trying to tailor the deployment along the LoC for the new manpower requirements on the LAC. Indeed, some RR troops were pulled out of J&K and sent to the LAC. The February 2021 recommitment by the Indian and Pakistan armies to the LoC ceasefire has certainly helped the Indian Army, with the guns silent on this front for almost exactly two years now, but there is no telling how long this may last.
Despite the statistical drop in violence, the attacks over the last year show that the security situation in J&K is far from resolved, and this should be kept in mind as the government chalks out the shift. A good start for troop thinning would be in areas with low violence levels. The J&K police must also put in place a regular crime control mechanism with emphasis on investigations, which may have a salutary effect against terrorist activity. The ultimate goal in J&K, however, is political empowerment, and for this, the government must make plans to hold assembly elections at the earliest.
