Terrorists in J&K on the run, says Arun Jaitley

New Delhi: Saying the shelf life of terrorists in the Kashmir valley had shrunk to just a few months, Union defence minister Arun Jaitley said on Sunday that terrorists in the Kashmir valley were now on the run and could not continue to terrorise people for decades.

Saying that the government’s priority was to clean up the Kashmir valley of terrorists, Mr Jaitley said: “Today no big militant can dream of committing terror acts and continue to terrorise the valley for decades, but today their life shelf has dwindled to a few months. I will specifically praise the Jammu & Kashmir police for working hard. They (terrorists) are on the run. Their numbers are also declining. Security forces are dominating them”.

The minister said terrorists in Kashmir were “now under great pressure” and the financial crunch caused by demonetisation and the action taken by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on illegal foreign fundings have checked illegal activities in Jammu and Kashmir on a large scale.

The defence minister, who was participating in a TV programme, refrained from making any comment on the stand-off between India and China in the Dokalam area near the Bhutan tri-junction, saying “let us have full faith on our security forces”.

“Since independence, Pakistan has never agreed that Kashmir is an integral part of India. That has been their unfinished agenda. They tried a conventional war. But India’s capability was way ahead in the conventional war. The wars of 1965, 1971 and Kargil clearly proved this”.

By the 1990s, Pakistan started changing its strategy and resorted to encouraging terrorism inside India, said Jaitley. “There is domination of our forces on the Line of Control (LoC) and the international border and it is difficult for terrorists to cross them”.

Responding to a question about beheading and mutilation of an Indian security force personnel by Pakistan, Jaitley said “what happened after that, has been seen by everyone” in apparent reference to the surgical strike inside the parts of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir after the incident. “Whenever there was an encounter (earlier), hundreds and thousands would come out to throw stones. Many a times, terrorists would escape under the protection of stone throwers. This is now becoming history. Those who were coming in hundreds and thousands, today their number is limited to 20, 30 and 50,” he added.