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LoC trade figures in peace deal

Praveen Swami

Vohra sounds out political leaders on shrine-land issue

NEW DELHI: India will press Pakistan to expedite the opening of the Line of Control (LoC) for trade as part of a closely-guarded deal intended to defuse the communally-charged shrine-land agitation in Jammu and Kashmir.

Highly places government sources said the deal would allow the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board to use temporarily forest land to house pilgrims, but at once open up the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road for commercial traffic, thus meeting the demands of the competing religious-chauvinist movements that have set the State ablaze over the past eight weeks.

Governor N.N. Vohra, the sources said, sounded out political leaders in Jammu and Kashmir on the proposals at meetings held in Srinagar on Wednesday and Thursday.

While the People’s Democratic Party refused to participate, the issue is believed to have figured in talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the PDP patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, on Friday.

Informal discussions were also held with jailed secessionist leaders Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the sources said.

An announcement on an agreement arrived at between the government and the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti, which is leading the Jammu protests, has been deferred until a consensus is arrived at on the LoC trade deal.

“We do not want to push through an asymmetric agreement and provoke a backlash in Kashmir,” a top official told The Hindu.

Officially, the government insists that talks with the Samiti had been deferred owing to the ill- health of its key negotiator, Sudhir Bloeria.

Jammu-based Hindutva groups launched a movement in July, demanding that the government roll back an order reversing the permission it had granted to the shrine board for use of forest land. Among other things, its leaders threatened an economic blockade of the Valley to press their claims.

Islamist groups in Kashmir capitalised on the threat to launch a massive counter-mobilisation. On August 11, secessionist leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz and four others were killed when police used force to stop a march across the LoC. Over 30 people were killed in subsequent violence.

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