At least ninety-nine infiltration attempts were made by militants from across the border last year, a steep decline in the trend — the lowest in the last decade in Jammu and Kashmir.
Against 216 infiltration attempts made in 2019, “in 2020 there were ninety-nine such attempts,” Union Minister of State Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy said on Monday.
The figures were revealed in the parliament’s upper house Rajya Sabha. Seventy-one people were injured in ceasefire violations in the last year against 127 people in 2019. The last year also recorded the highest number of ceasefire violations.
As the government forces reported to have encountered ninety-nine infiltration attempts in 2020, the successful attempts are estimated to be the lowest in the last decade, too. For example, out of 216 attempts in 2019, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) estimates successful infiltration to be 138.
As per data provided in the annual reports of the MHA, the highest figure of the last decade was in 2018 when it recorded that 143 militants infiltrated in 328 attempts.
The number of infiltration attempts by the militants have hovered roughly between 250 to 400, except for 2015 when only 121 attempts were recorded by the MHA.
In the first half of the last decade, the MHA recorded the infiltration attempts as: 247 in 2011, 264 in 2012, 277 in 2013, 222 in 2014, and 121 in 2015. It further rose to 371 next year, when Kashmir witnessed a civilian uprising in the fallout of the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani.
The graph continued to decline in the following year with 419 attempts in 2017, and then 328 in 2018. The numbers further dropped in 2019 — with 216 recorded attempts — the year New Delhi unilaterally abrogated J-K’s limited-autonomy in a surprise move.
The move had received strongly worded condemnation from Pakistan and their Prime Minister raised the issue in the annual United Nations General Assembly. However, recent claims by a reputed Pakistani journalist alleged that Pakistan knew about India’s move in J-K prior to 5 August 2019.
Reddy added: “A total of 157 terrorists were neutralised in 2019 and 221 were eliminated in 2020. There were 594 cases of terrorist violence in 2019, which reduced to 244 in 2020. There were 327 stone pelting incidents in 2020 as compared to 2,009 such incidents in 2019.”
