Rakib Altaf
SRINAGAR: The Indian Army’s six day-long recruitment rally for the youth of Kashmir and Ladakh is scheduled to begin on November 6.
Aspirants from across the valley have been asked to converge at Pattan town of Baramulla district, 27 kms north of the Kashmir capital Srinagar, in a phase-wise manner.
The venue of the rally is among the most volatile towns of the valley and has seen massive anti-India protests over killings by the army in the past.
In March this year, a young man, Tahir Sofi was shot dead by troops of the Rashtriya Rifles, the army’s counter-insurgency unit in Baramulla.
A government probe has recently concluded that Mr Sofi’s killing was unjustified and that the Army soldiers had fired “without reason”.
‘Under Pressure’
On the other hand, authorities are also worried about an increase in militant activity in the town and adjoining areas.
A government probe has concluded that Tahir Sofi was killed by the Army “without reason”.
Overall violence, that has killed tens of thousands of people in the valley, has declined in recent years. But authorities say militants have been making fresh recruitment, more visible in the northern region.
This prompted the police in Pattan to issue Urdu posters offering jobs and huge money for information leading to either the killing or arrest of militants.
“We were under huge pressure to do something…their presence is growing…so we had to do something new, get them somehow…,” a police officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity had told FreePress.
Barely ten days later, one militant on the list was down, although nothing can be said with certainty if people were falling to the bait.
So in this context nothing can be predicted about how many youth will take the Army’s test to be a part of the institution.
Dilemma
Neither can anything be said about how many will clinch a job, says Defence Spokesman Naresh Vig.
“It depends of how many of them are physically fit, a rarity these days,” Mr Vig says.
But in the past, thousands of youth have taken part in such rallies, disregarding a struggle for an end to New Delhi’s rule in the state that has seen tens of thousands killed since 1989.
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At one rally the police had to use batons and firing tear smoke shells to discipline the crowd.
In February 2011, barely months after a long phase of anti-India protests, nearly 10,000 youth participated in an army recruitment rally.
Around 110 people, most young men and even children, died during the uprising, most of them at the hands of police and paramilitaries.
All this, observers say, showed the dilemma faced by the youth in Kashmir, where anti-India sentiment runs deep, and the youth leave no chance to make it visible.
But according to them it also showed their growing frustrations when it comes to unemployment – that has only been rising in the state.
