Safe zones set up for apple dealers in J&K

| | New Delhi/Jammu
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Safe zones set up for apple dealers in J&K

Sunday, 20 October 2019 | Rahul Datta/Mohit Kandhari | New Delhi/Jammu

Safe zones set up for apple dealers in J&K

Forces revisit plan for secure trade in Valley after terrorists kill traders  

Taking a serious note of the killing of three outsiders involved in apple trade in Kashmir earlier this week despite the large presence of security personnel, the security establishment has revisited its strategy by providing a safety umbrella in the hinterland dotted with apple orchards.

The Army and paramilitary forces have fanned out in such areas besides population centres to instill confidence among masses and deny terrorists time and space to move.

However, setting up of safe pickup points for collection of apple crops in the wake of the killings have created problems for the orchard owners located far away. While traders have been advised to use smaller vehicles for apple transportation from interiors of the district, they are finding it difficult to ferry their produce to these mandis due to lack of smaller vehicles. If this is cutting into their profit margins, it is also affecting the timely transport of the produce to markets outside Kashmir.

On an average, one truck carries 800 to 1,000 apple boxes. Transporters are charging Rs 135-140 per box compared to Rs 80-90 earlier.

Kashmir produces over 20-24 lakh metric tonnes of apple worth Rs 10,000 crore annually. The attacks on apple traders and truck drivers in Shopian have triggered a fresh wave of terror among the truck drivers and large number of non-local workers engaged in the laborious task of packing, loading and unloading of apple boxes.

Effort is to ensure that apple traders in the hinterland of major apple growing centre of Sopore, which has Asia’s biggest mandi for this fruit, Shopian, Pulwama and Anantnag in South Kashmir are able to continue with their routine economic activities.

In the meantime, a positive development has come in the way of the security forces as intelligence flow about militants has improved in the last few days. Explaining the significance of this factor, officials said since August 5, the local police and intelligence agencies were concentrating on maintaining law and order anticipating unrest like mass protests and violence. Also the snapping of mobile services impacted intelligence gathering and information flow came down by at least 70 per cent, they said.

With the restoration of mobile services earlier this week and virtually no mass protests as feared, the local police, which provide the real time intelligence about terrorists, has now re-established its counter-terrorism grid.

This will result in the Army going after the terrorists already holed up in the sensitive areas and 70-odd militants managing to infiltrate into the State from across the Line of Control (LoC) in the last two months, they said.

The killings came at a time when normalcy was returning with the apple trade considered to be the lifeline of Jammu & Kashmir picking up. People were going about their daily economic activities after abrogation of Article 370 giving special status to the State on August 5.

The security establishment thus redrew its strategy by deploying the Army and paramilitary in the hinterland and populated centres of Kashmir especially those engaged in the apple trade, sources said on Saturday.

The Army is now carrying out area domination patrols in large areas to instill confidence amongst the masses on the one hand and denying terrorists time and space to move, they said.

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