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Samaan Lateef
Tribune News Service
Srinagar, August 21
The J&K Government sent 116 stranded residents of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) back home as the cross-Line of Control (LoC) bus service operating between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad resumed today.
The LoC bus service also known as Karvan-e-Aman (peace bus) resumed after remaining suspended since August 14.
As per the schedule, the weekly bus left Srinagar today for the Kaman post, the last Indian military post on this side of the LoC in the border town of Uri in Baramulla district.
The bus carried 50 passengers, including 42 PoK residents and eight residents of Kashmir, who crossed the Kaman post, Uri Sub-District Magistrate Sagar Doifode told The Tribune.
Doifode said the 116 residents of PoK, who were stranded in Jammu for the past over a month after the Poonch-Rawalkote bus service was suspended due to heavy shelling from Pakistani troops along the LoC, were also sent back to their home through Uri.
He said the PoK residents in Poonch left for the Kaman post early in morning through historic Mughal Road, connecting Shopian with Rajouri and Poonch in the Jammu region.
Officials said three residents of this side who were stranded in PoK have also returned home.
The Karvan-e-Aman, which was started on April 7, 2005, runs on a weekly basis but due to the tension on the LoC, the number of people travelling in it has come down in the last one year. The bus service helped thousands of families of J&K, divided by Partition, to meet each.
Both LoC trade and bus service are considered as the important confidence-building measures between two warring nuclear-armed neighbors — India and Pakistan.
However, the cross-LoC trade has come under the radar of the NIA, which is probing terror funding in Kashmir, and as per reports may recommend closure of trade along these routes.
Bus service was stopped due to LoC tension
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