New Delhi: National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval is expected to stay put in Jammu & Kashmir for some more days, with an occasional dash to New Delhi, so he can “micro-manage” the law and order situation following the abrogation of Article 370.
Doval, the first NSA with a Cabinet rank, had landed in Srinagar on 5 August, hours after Home Minister Amit Shah announced the abrogation of Article 370 and the state’s bifurcation, besides its reclassification as a union territory.
He has been there since then, visiting various troubled areas, including Shopian in south Kashmir, the hotbed of local militants in Kashmir.
Sources in the security establishment told ThePrint that the NSA is constantly on the job. According to them, he has made it a point to be in the field to personally take stock of the situation instead of depending on the inputs of security officials.
The only time he left J&K was Sunday, when he made a quick trip to New Delhi for a few hours. He was back in Srinagar by evening, the sources said.
Viral on social media
Doval’s Kashmir trip became a social media sensation last week when videos and photographs of him enjoying a meal with Kashmiris on the streets of south Kashmir went viral Wednesday.
The videos, according to sources, were put out “systematically” by the officials concerned to show that the situation in Kashmir is calm and that Doval is in control.
Apart from feasting on biryani with Kashmiris, the videos also show Doval in discussion with Jammu & Kashmir Police, the CRPF and the Army — the three forces handling security in Kashmir — and were an instant hit.
The videos were a surprise because they marked the first time ever that an incumbent NSA was seen on the ground and in action.
The site where the footage was shot, Shopian, was specifically chosen too, because of its role in local militancy.
Among other things, his presence in the state is meant to be a message to the security forces — especially Jammu & Kashmir Police, which is likely to bear the brunt of any deterioration in the law-and-order situation — that the government stands by them.
Doval offered, PM accepted
According to the sources, visiting Kashmir was Doval’s idea as the NSA wanted to personally take control of the security situation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as Home Minister Amit Shah, the sources said, readily agreed.
Doval was one of three people involved in the decision-making around Article 370 — the two others being Modi and Shah, a trio labelled ‘MSD’ by social media — with other relevant people brought in as and when necessary, the sources said.
They added that the visit was thus a planned one, and not something decided on at the last moment.
Doval, the third pillar of the edifice
The trio is said to have had their task cut out as they went about thrashing out the details of the Article 370 move.
Prime Minister Modi gave the political weight, while Home Minister Amit Shah was tasked with ensuring that there were legal ways to do it, and that the decision was passed successfully in both Houses, said the sources.
Doval took charge of the security and law-and-order situation, the sources added
“Both the Prime Minister and the home minister delivered on their task. And now the third pillar of the edifice has to deliver,” one of the sources said. “And that is why he is on the ground in Kashmir and coordinating the entire response from a security point of view.”
Another source said: “Doval was at ease in Kashmir because the Centre was anyway ruling the state since there was no chief minister (the state is under President’s rule).
“Also, the Cabinet rank of the NSA outweighs the rank of the governor and, hence, he was more comfortable in taking direct decisions, including the one to send around 70 hardened terrorists and separatists to Agra from the union territory.”
Sources in the security agencies said Doval’s presence in Kashmir had helped a lot when it came to decision-making.
“He had come down few weeks ago,” said a source. “At that time, he wanted a feel from the ground about the law and order challenges and what needs to be done. And now it is about implementing the plan.”
Also read: Modi’s ‘James Bond’ Ajit Doval comes out in the open to keep Kashmir calm
Fine two minute capsule from Ms Ananya Bhardwaj, reporting from Srinagar. Ironically, how the foreign media is covering developments is reportedly being tracked very closely. Yorker, googly, helicopter shot – that is the sum total of my knowledge of cricket – time will tell.
An entire population of Kashmir locked as prisoners in their own homes. With one in ten people in Kashmir an armed policeman, stationed in Kashmir to use violence, against a defenceless people.
I found those staged bizarre pictures of Doval, distributed to the compliant Indian media, where this man is laughing and eating lunch with Kashmiris, against a background of deserted under curfew streets, with shut doors of homes in the background, surreal and disturbing.
Here is the man who ordered the locking up of millions of men, women and children, who planned the cutting of all communication with them, he now has the gumption of releasing staged pictures of himself,
laughing and eating biryani with Kashmiris.
As a Muslim I found Doval’s pictures grotesque an abomination, to this while millions of elderly and children are locked inside, unable to go out to get medicines, to go to school to contact worried loved ones.
What kind of monster is this?
Karl Otto Koch was commandant of Sachsenhausen, he used to pose exactly like Ajit Doval in front of happy laughing prisoners, he used to pull the cheeks of the children there and give them sweets too.
This man Doval planned all this suffering, he meticulously hears reports on detentions and oppression. He is responsible for checkpoints ever few hundred yards, where you are at the mercy or whim of a policeman to let you through.
Doval also oversees the detention and interrogation centres, where any policeman can pick you up and send you there for torture, described in the UN human rights reports.
Doval is head of the apparatus that is responsible for 70,000 deaths and 10,000 disappeared.
India has not allowed the UN’s special rapporteur for torture to visit Kashmir since 1993. The country has signed but not ratified the UN Convention against Torture.
When a Kashmiri meets Ajit Doval the reaction is fear. They are terrified.
AS AN INDIAN MUSLIM I SYMPATHISE WITH MY KASHMIRI BROTHERS
The people of Kashmir are greatful if Doval could bring an end to large scale violence orchestrated, logistical support, financial support from Pakistan to do military grade RDX bombs, machine guns, Islamic state recruitment, spreading hate and misery to people. This is not Kashmir.