'J&K violence drops by two-thirds'

New Delhi: Amid the ongoing debate over a possible pullout of troops from Jammu and Kashmir, a top police official on Sunday claimed that the number of daily killings in Jammu and Kashmir has fallen by more than two-thirds. The official described the violence levels to be "the lowest in the past 17 years".

"In the past few years, there has been a considerable decline in violence. The killings have come down from 10 a day in 2001 to three a day in 2006," Reuters quoted the senior security official as saying.

The news agency didn't identify the official, saying he did not want to be named. "This has been the lowest figure since the insurgency erupted in late 1989," the official claimed.

This could add fresh impetus to the PDP's demand for the dimilitarisation of Kashmir. The PDP has been playing hardball with the Centre on the issue and had even threatened to pull out of its alliance with the Congress in J&K if the Centre failed to meet its demand.

The party, however, relented after two senior party leader Mufti Mohammed Sayeed had two rounds of talks with the Prime Minister and other senior government officials in New Delhi last week. The Centre last week said it will soon set up a panel of experts to determine whether to reduce troop numbers across Kashmir.

The party ministers in the J&K Government ended their boycott of Cabinet meetings on Saturday evening for the first time after February 15.

They attended the Cabinet meet that appointed deputy commissioners for the eight newly-created districts and shuffled several other civil and police officials.

According to police figures 42,147 people — 20,647 terrorists, 16,476 civilians and 5,024 security personnel — have been killed in Kashmir ever since the bloody revolt broke out in 1989. Human rights groups, however, put the toll at around 60,000 while some say more than 100,000 have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir.

With violence levels falling, the summer capital, Srinagar, no longer shuts down by dusk. Shops and restaurants, which closed before dusk earlier, now stay open until late evening.

"We are just praying and hoping the situation improves further and keeping our fingers crossed," Reuters quoted 35-year-old Saqlain Ahmad, a local resident and shopkeeper, as saying.