J&K police says militant numbers declining, army says 300 ultras active

J&K police chief added that anti-militancy operations were going on and very soon remaining ultras will be eliminated as well

At a time when Jammu and Kashmir police chief Dilbag Singh said that the number of local militants has been reduced to double-digit, a senior army commander contradicted his statement saying that around 300 ultras were present in the Union Territory (UT).

J&K Director General of Police (DGP), Dilbagh Singh said the number of active local militants has been brought to just two digits. “Very less foreign terrorists are active as of now,” he said while talking to reporters on the sidelines of an official function in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district on Tuesday. Singh also added that anti-militancy operations were going on and very soon remaining ultras will be eliminated as well.

Read | Situation in Jammu and Kashmir much better now, says DGP Dilbag Singh

However, on the same day Northern Command chief Lieutenant General Upendra Dwivedi said that around 300 militants were present in J&K, while 160 others are waiting along the launch pads along the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan for an opportunity to sneak into this side.

“As per our data, 82 Pakistani terrorists and 53 locals are active in the hinterland, while the area of concern is the criminal activities of 170 others who are not identified,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an official function in the border district of Poonch. The Army commander also said around 160 militants are present across the LoC - 130 in north of Pir Panjal (Kashmir valley) and 30 in south of Pir-Panjal.

A senior police officer told DH that many of the foreign militants crossing into Kashmir are affiliated with Jash-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), groups based in Pakistan that have been fighting together with the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction, in Afghanistan.

According to official data, the number of active foreign militants tracked in Kashmir peaked in 2018, at 143, falling to 138 in 2019 and to just 23 in 2020.

But the trend seems to be reversing with the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. “JeM and LeT will get rejuvenated after finishing off in Afghanistan. There could be a tactical shift in militancy, but a strategic change would take a little bit more time,” he added.