The government is discussing to withdraw the Indian army completely from Kashmir’s hinterland, if the proposal is accepted than the army will only be present on the Line of Control (LoC). It has been 3 years since Jammu and Kashmir have been given the special status and the decision for withdrawal of troops have begun since then, officials in the security establishment stated that the discussions have been going for about 2 years and is at an “advanced stage” now that the Union Ministry of Defense, Union Ministry of Home Affairs, armed forces and the J&K police is involved it is being proposed that the CRPF will fill in for the army in Kashmir’s hinterland where they would tackle law related challenges as well as counter-terror operations.
According to officials, the army has a strength of 1.3 lakh personnel in the entire j&K out of which 80,000 are deployed to the border. About 40,000 -45,000 personnel are from the Rashtriya Rifles and have the capability and resources to deal with counter-terror operations in Kashmir’s hinterland whereas there is a strength of 60,000 CRPF personnel in J&K out of which 45,000 are deployed to the Kashmir valley. There are 83,000 J&K police and apart from it there are few companies of Central Armed Police Forces as well there numbers fluctuate depending on the security condition in the valley.
The government believes that the terrorist violence and killing of security personnel in J&K have got reduced by almost 50 per cent since August 5th, 2019. The withdrawal of Army would be done in a phased manner, it has been proposed that the Rashtriya Rifles of the Indian Army be removed in 3 phases and replace with CRPF another proposal has also been made to not completely remove the Army only reduce the number and the Army has already made plans for resizing.