Crossing LoC: Pakistan, India approve triple entry permits

Travel on the new permit will be valid for three visits in a year.

MUZAFFARABAD: Pakistan and India have agreed to further facilitate travel between the two parts of disputed Jammu and Kashmir by providing triple entry permits to divided Kashmiri families to travel across the Line of Control (LoC).

“A decision has been taken by both governments and we have obtained permission for this by taking up the matter with the foreign office,” Director General Cross LoC Trade and Travel Authority (TATA) Brigadier (retd) Muhammad Ismail said on Wednesday.

Travelling on a triple entry permit will be valid for three visits in one year to either part of Kashmir through Srinagar-Muzaffarabad and Poonch-Rawalakot bus services.

The triple entry permit will be also valid on crossing points established in Neelum Valley and Tetapani Kotli.

Ismail said the triple entry permit for intra-Kashmir travel through bus service and crossing pints will ease the reunions of divided Kashmiri families.

“Now the applicants will not need to continuously visit offices nor have to go through a procedure for travel every time,” he said, adding that the luggage of the passengers will now be transported by vehicles instead on trolleys. Since April 2005, 9,206 Kashmiri have traveled from Azad Kashmir to Indian Kashmir, while 6, 205 people have visited Azad Kashmir from Indian Kashmir.

Thousands of divided families are living on either side of the LoC since 1948 after a cease fire line was drawn which divides Kashmir between Azad Kashmir and Indian Kashmir. The cease fire line was turned into the Line of Control (LOC) after the Simla Accord between India and Pakistan in 1972.

Both countries started bus services between the two Kashmirs in April 2005 and truck service in October 2008, for families to reunite.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Indian Kashmir trade authorities turned away 12 trucks from Indian Kashmir to Azad Kashmir terming them as exceeding the limit of weekly trade.

The AJK TATA has decided to ban the trade of onion to Indian Kashmir given its soaring prices in Pakistan. TATA had also banned the trade of Dal Mong which had become a favorite trading item for AJK traders given high profit margin.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2010.