Valley: Tension over door-to-door survey

The locals are upset over deployment of the soldiers of the Rashtriya Rifles, a unit of the Indian Army, instead of carrying out such a door-to-door survey with the help of the civilian staff.The knock of the soldiers on the doors is intimidating and brea

The Kashmir valley is in the grip of a tension and fear over the Army soldiers going from house to house to collect the details of the locals, including infants and putting a sign on the door of the house so visited after gathering information.

The locals are upset over the government deploying the soldiers of the Rashtriya Rifles, a unit of the Indian Army, instead of carrying out such a door-to-door survey with the help of the civilian staff. The knock of the soldiers on the doors is intimidating and breach of their privacy, the human right outfits asserted.

The soldiers are moving from village to village gathering information about each person living in a house and questioning whereabouts of anyone not present at the time of their visit. The Rashtriya Rifles kicked off the exercise from Sopore area in March and they are now busy in the Bijbehara area of Islamabad district.

While the authorities in Srinagar tried to describe the exercise as a search operation by the soldiers to check the terrorists getting shelter in the rural areas, the locals say they are asking the kind of questions that have nothing to do with such a search.

They say the soldiers are asking minute details such as the number of family members, their names, occupation, age, gender and all other things, village after village in the area.

Their fear is that the soldiers are trying to locate the youths indulging in stone throwing at the security forces and obstructing antimilitancy drives of the Army.

The police came under criticism and a lot of protests were lodged in February 2016 when it distributed forms to the people in Srinagar to give out their details, including their religion and sect.