SRINAGAR: Paramilitary men that had been sent on poll duty and to manage protests in the rest of India are returning, a top police officer has told the NDTV. This apparently is the reason behind the massive troop movement in parts of Jammu and Kashmir.
“These troops are returning from states where elections were held recently, The NDTV quoted Vijay Kumar, Kashmir Police Chief saying. “They are being re-inducted. It’s not new deployment.”
The paramilitary men, it said, “are those who went for election duty to West Bengal and other states.”
The report said that most of them have been deployed in north Kashmir and parts of the Jammu region. “The massive troop build-up has led some local leaders to raise concerns as this is for the first time Jammu and Kashmir is seeing such a build-up since August 2019, when special status to the state was scrapped and it was divided into two Union Territories,” it added.
Social media is agog with a lot of rumours in the last few days. Though in Jammu and Kashmir, rumours have been a prelude to the news, the NDTV report has quoted officials saying that “there is no truth in rumours of the troop movement as a prelude to some big development”.
Authorities in early 2021 had pulled out around 100 companies from Jammu and Kashmir. Now the NDTV report said 200 companies pulled out earlier and returned back. “Fifty companies returned a month ago, and the rest are coming back now and being redeployed,” it added.
Home ministry had deployed 800 additional companies into Jammu and Kashmir before reading down Article 370 and bifurcating the Jammu and Kashmir state into two federally controlled territories.
