After prolonged talks India and Pakistan agreed in 2008 for opening two points along LoC in J&K for conducting cross-LoC trade between the two parts of divided State of Jammu and Kashmir. There were many apprehensions before the final agreement was arrived at. The main apprehension was that the opening of the two trading points should not mean that the dispute is resolved and LoC is preparing to become the international border. When the two countries agreed on detaching LoC trade from the dispute, the stage was set and Slamabad in Uri sector and Chakan-da-Bagh in Poonch sector were identified for cross-LoC trading points. Consequently, the infrastructure was raised and all preliminaries were finalized for conducting trade.
As trade expanded, traders on both sides joined to demand more trading facilities from respective Governments. These focused round updated infrastructure, telephone connectivity, scanners, international banking system and many other facilities. Both sides played low on these demands and did not make any unwanted haste just to ensure that trading mechanism was settling down and getting institutionalized. Some improvement was made in infrastructure item by item. Essentially, opening of these trading points was meant to give impetus to confidence building measure. Of course, there were some hiccups in the entire project but with patience and farsightedness on both sides those were overcome and angularities were straightened. Today the quantum of trade has increased and things are getting underway. If good relations continue between the two countries and these must continue at any rate, there will be big boost for trade between two parts of the divided State.
We are happy to know that the Government of India has decided to place order for five full body truck scanners for various check points on the border including two points in our State. Once these full scanners are installed and made functional, then the cumbersome job of inspecting the merchandise item by item will not be there. Full body truck scanners means that once the truck is on scanner all of its contents will be screened for detection of any unwanted item. This will save lot of time and labour and will ease cross LoC trade to a large extent. We are hopeful that with the passage of time more facilities will be provided by each side and finally the trading will reach the level of international standards.
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