Monday, January 31 2005 15:51 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Terming the recent shelling on the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir as "nothing sinister", outgoing Army chief Gen N C Vij today (Jan 31, 2005) said the country's adversaries would find it hard to push militants across the border.

He said recent ceasefire violations could be "stray cases" either attributable to rogue elements in the Pakistan Army, who might be helping to push the militants across, or groups of militants attempting to sneak in.

"There is no cause of concern. Our troops maintained restraint and did not respond to the shelling and it speaks volumes of how seasoned they had become," Vij said in an informal interaction with reporters after laying down office as the Chief of Army Staff.

While outlining that new structural reforms were being enforced in the Army, he said most of these measures had now been cleared by the Government.

Asked if the erection of an anti-infiltration fence could be described as the highlight of his two-and-a-half year tenure as the Army Chief, he said, "Bringing about near normalcy is a proud achievement of the Army with help from paramilitary forces, local police and administration and the State Government".

"We have been able to bring down infiltration to a trickle despite best of efforts from the other side," Vij said maintaining that the adversaries would find it very difficult to push people across if the forces kept up the present security posture.

He said that sustained combined efforts by civil and military authorities had led to people in the State coming forward to show their yearning for peace and this was indicated by the heavy turnout of voters in the local body elections even in separatist strongholds like Sopore, Baramullah and Kupwara.

Vij said while these areas, which had less than ten per cent turnout in general elections, had shown over 50 per cent polling with the percentage in the border areas going as high as 70-80 per cent.

Security forces had also been able to eliminate the top leadership of the militants inside Jammu and Kashmir, with the number of militants decreasing from 3,500 to 1,600-1,700.

"This number will decrease further as the inflow across the border has become a trickle and the security forces keep up their pressure on them," he said.

On whether prolonged deployment in the anti-militancy operations was leading to stress factor in the Army, the outgoing chief said though there were mistakes and aberrations in view of high employment in Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast, efforts were on to maintain higher standards of discipline.

Asked about recent spurt of incidents of indiscipline in the forces, he said the armed forces had to live up to high expectations of the people and all aberrations were being dealt with expeditiously and in transparent manner in full glare of the media.