SRINAGAR: On his first day in North Block, the Home Minister Ami Shah got a detailed briefing on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmir governor Satya Pal Malik also flew to Delhi and briefed him on the very first day in office.
Reports appearing in Delhi media suggest that Shah was briefed by Director, Intelligence Bureau, Rajiv Jain and Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba. Later, he spent 15-minutes in a closed-door meeting with Satya Pal Malik. “I had a brief discussion with the Home Minister on the law and order situation in the valley as well as on the border areas,” Malik told reporters after his brief meeting was over.
News reports said the Malik-Shah meeting was mostly about the preparation being made for the annual Amarnath Yatra that is going to be a 46-day affair this summer. It is started on July 1 and will conclude on August 15.
The Governor is reported to have said that the issue related to holding assembly elections in the state was not discussed as the matter was under the purview of the Election Commission of India.
News reports quoting sources said that Home Ministry’s Internal Security Department and the Jammu and Kashmir Affairs division had earlier prepared special notes to be placed before the new Home Minister.
Shah took over as Home Minister after a month-long non-stop counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir. For the first time after many years, the Muslim month of fasting witnessed scores of operations as the Lok Sabha elections were going on in the rest of the country. Reports said more than 100 militants were killed in, what is called the “unrelenting operations” by the counter-insurgency grid in the first five months of the years.
Reports said that efforts are underway to have a robust and refined collaborative system in place between defence and home monitories on Kashmir.
