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| Army's complete withdrawal just not possible: former DGP | | |
AGENCIES
NEW DELHI, Mar 9: Former J&K DGP Gopal Sharma today said even as police were well equipped and trained to take on militants in Jammu and Kashmir, army should not be withdrawn completely from there.
"Though police have learnt a lot in the past 20 years of turmoil in the state in combating terrorism and have now been better equipped to fight insurgency, still army should not be withdrawn completely from there," he said while speaking in a panel discussion organized by the Institute of Peace and Conflict studies (IPCS) at the India International Center (IIC) here.
"I think army's complete withdrawal from Jammu and Kashmir is just not possible and great caution should be taken while thinking about the same," Sharma added.
This event aimed to address the findings of a report that was the outcome of a workshop on the escalation of religious and ethnic radicalization in the regions of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. The workshop took place in December 2009 in Jammu with the joint collaboration of the IPCS and the University of Jammu. The report prepared by the IPCS, based on the deliberations of the workshop, would subsequently be submitted to the central and state governments as recommendations and circulated widely in the media in J&K.
Asserting that the land laws limit economic development in conflict hit Jammu and Kashmir because no major company is going to invest until they can own land, Mr. Gopal Sharma further stressed that the issue of the Amarnath Shrine Land controversy was a great downturn. "The abusive slogans from crowds during protests are meant to provoke a soldier that comes from mainland India. These mindsets are not coming from Kashmir but are what can be called 'western disturbances'. "he said. "Everything that you say about Jammu and Kashmir - the opposite can also be true. It is very important to derive truth from facts otherwise all your inferences shall be half-truths. In the unique narrative of this state, the first casualty is the truth", said Air Vice Marshal (AVM) Kapil Kak while speaking at the occasion.
Prof. Siddiq Wahid, vice chancellor of Islamic University, Kashmir said the people of J&K are perhaps the most politically educated people in the country. Therefore, it is important to put a political solution on the table and they shall recognize it.
Promoting the third tier approach to governance, heavy handedness of J&K bureaucracy, role of the police vs. army, ethnic fault lines, secular solutions and the proportional relation between marginalization and radicalization were some of the points that came up during the discussion session.
Apart from Sharma, others panelists included Prof Siddiq Wahid, Vice-Chairman, Islamic University, Srinagar, and Air Vice-Marshal Kapil Kak. Maj Gen Dipanker Banerjee, Director of IPCS, chaired the sessions of the panel discussion.
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