New Delhi: From January till November this year, the number of ceasefire violations along the Jammu and Kashmir border made by Pakistani troops has broken all records of the past 17 years. In 2020, the total number of ceasefire violations till date amount to at least 4,052 instances of which 128 happened in November and 394 in October, said Indian Army sources on Friday.
Last year in 2019, a total of 3,233 incidents ceasefire violations were made by the Pakistan Army along the Indo-Pak border, they said.
According to a report from the month of October, there were more than 3,800 incidents of unprovoked ceasefire violations along the Line of Control (LoC), reacting to which Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, “This is a clear violation of the 2003 ceasefire understanding between the two sides. This year, till date, Pakistani forces have carried out more than 3,800 unprovoked ceasefire violations.”
Earlier in June, Defence Spokesperson Lt Col Devender Anand said, “There have been more than 2000 incidents of ceasefire violations along the Line of Control by the Pakistani troops in less than six months in the year 2020.”
He then added that there were 114 instances of ceasefire violations in the first 10 days of June as compared to 181 and 14 instances of ceasefire violations in the whole month in 2019 and 2018 respectively.
The Jammu-based Defence PRO, Lt Col Devender Anand, said, “2020 figure for ceasefire violations is astonishing, in less than 6 months there have been more than 2000 violations. If we compare with past years, there weren’t as many violations in the entire 2018.”
The number of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops in 2019 were over 300 more than in 2018 and over three times that of 2017, when 971 cases were reported. In 2017, 31 people — 12 civilians and 19 security forces personnel — were killed and 151 others suffered injures.
Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and even during the global lockdown, the Line of Control (LoC) continued to remain a war zone as there has been no let down in operations in Jammu and Kashmir which led to increased engagements between the troops and terrorists.
Giving details of cases of ceasefire violations in the past decade, the officials said 405 cases of ceasefire violations were reported in 2015, and 583 in 2014. There was a gradual increase in ceasefire violations by Pakistan between 2009 and 2013. The corresponding figures for 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009 were 347, 114, 62, 44, and 28 respectively.
The numbers of such violations were 77 in 2008, 21 in 2007 and three in 2006, according to official data. For three years – 2004, 2005 and 2006 – there was not a single such violation on the border.
The Indian government led by late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee entered into a border ceasefire agreement with Pakistan along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir on November 26, 2003.
India shares a 3,323-km-long border with Pakistan, of which 221 km of the International Border (IB) and 740 km of the Line of Control (LoC) fall in Jammu and Kashmir.