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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Coming, a special package for Jammu and Kashmir

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Like Naxal-affected districts, Jammu and Kashmir will also get an elaborate socioeconomic package with a twopronged objective of neutralizing discontent and effective utilisation of funds.

The package comes in the backdrop of the home ministry's view that more funds are required for development to contain discontentment considering that militancy in the state is losing public support.

A team of secretaries and additional secretaries from 17 ministries led by Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrashekar

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posted by PressMart Team at 10:33 AM 0 Comments

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Split Wide Open

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Fifteen people were killed and over 100 injured as the police and army fired on angry, curfew-defying crowds in 20 locations across the state on Tuesday. In Delhi, the union government called a second all party meeting in five days in another bid to control the explosive situation.

Thirteen of the deaths occurred in the Kashmir valley where thousands poured into the streets, ignoring the curfew imposed, to mourn the death of Shaikh Abdul Aziz, the separatist leader who was killed in firing by security forces on Monday Two other people were killed in Jammu, where the situation turned rapidly communal, with Hindus and Muslims clashing in several towns, burning each other's shops and houses.

Over 50,000 people, some from faraway towns, converged in Srinagar to offer burial prayers for Shaikh Aziz. Large crowds surrounded the policemen deployed outside the houses of separatist leaders Syed Ali Geelani and Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, both of whom were under house arrest, rendering the police helpless. Both leaders, at the urging of the crowd, walked out free and led processions to Aziz's grave.

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posted by PressMart Team at 10:45 AM 0 Comments

Friday, July 18, 2008

Bussiness of death runs into bad days

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The tombstone maker is carving marble name plaques for new homes. The elderly grave digger who has buried hundreds of bullet-ridden bodies is idle. And the post-mortem man in his spotless white coat now only deals with jilted lovers and jobless youth.

Times are changing: the business of death has run into bad days in Kashmir.

From the 4,510 deaths in 2001, the highest number for a year in the insurgency, militancy-related fatalities dropped to about 890 in 2007, officials say. This year, 84 people have been reported dead until mid-June.

So 20 years after the deaths began, three different men in different parts of Srinagar, with similar glazed emotionless eyes — Mohammed Maqbool Tramboo the tombmaker, Abdul Kabir Sheikh the grave digger and Mohammed Maqbool the post-mortem man — have little to do.

“Until a few years ago, there were times when I used to be working day and night, continuously. There is no doubt, the number of militancy deaths is much less and the levels of violence have gone down drastically,” said Mohammed Maqbool Tramboo, 37, a tombmaker who left his home in Anantnag town 15 years ago to make a living in Srinagar.

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posted by PressMart Team at 10:47 AM 0 Comments

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Cooler May means a taller Amarnath Shivlingam

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Unlike the past two years when hot conditions led to early melting of the Shivlingam at the Sri Amarnath cave shrine, its size is growing owing to the unusually cool summer this time round.

A spokesman for the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB), who visited the shrine along with Kashmir Governor S.K. Sinha on Thursday, said the Shiv1ingam has been showing signs of growth for the past few days. The ice lingams of Ma Parvati and Ganesh have also formed fully.

Temperatures at 13,500 feet above sea level, where the shrine is located, are sub-zero in the night these days. This has kept the size growing, said Nazir Ahmad, a guard at the shrine. "At least the lingam's size and girth has not decreased since March 25 when we took the first pictures."

The factors that have contributed to the phenomenon range from cool weather, to grilled protection, to keeping security forces deployed on the cave periphery at bay.

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posted by PressMart Team at 11:10 AM 0 Comments