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Lieutenant General B S Raju, Commander of the Army’s Chinar Corps (XV Corps), said that after the abrogation of article 370 and 35A by Central government removed, Jammu and Kashmir region is “past that stage of uneasy calm”.
According to a report by the Indian Express , Lt Gen BS Raju, the commander of the army's Chinar Corps, has said that Jammu and Kashmir has moved ahead of tensions.
The Government of India abolished the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir in August last year and divided it into two union territories.
BS Raju said in a conversation with reporters, "We have ended the infiltration from Pakistan to a great extent. Additional forces have been deployed and the use of technology has increased. The Indian Army is now also using drone planes to monitor the LoC. ''
He said that right now there will be 200 active extremists in North and South Kashmir.
According to army figures, 117 out of 207 extremists currently active are local while 90 have come from Pakistan.
On combating militancy, Raju said: “We have been able to keep the violence level at a threshold…where normal people can continue to do their job… (We) have been able to keep the terrorist numbers also under a fair amount of control.”
Today, north and south Kashmir put together, Raju said, has over 200 militants at any given point of time, “which was like 260 in the beginning of the year”. The Corps Commander attributed this dip to “the close synergy between all the security agencies”.
According to army report in north Kashmir has 22 local recruits and 65 Pakistani militants while the south has 95 local recruits and 25 militants from across the border. The data show that while 24 youth joined militancy in north Kashmir, 107 did so in the south.
Militants present in Kashmir as of October, 89 are with Lashkar-e-Taiba, of which 51 are Pakistani, the data show. Hizbul Mujahideen has a total 56 militants, with 52 local recruits; Jaish-e-Mohammed has 52; and, Al Badr, which had been dormant for many years, had recruited 16 local youth this year of which 10 are active.
