Relief package for flood-hit Kashmir

(MENAFN- Arab News) SRINAGAR: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday announced a 7.5 billion rupee ($120 million) relief package for flood-hit Kashmir as his Bharatiya Janata Party seeks to expand support beyond the mainly Hindu lowlands of Jammu. Modi's visit to the flood affected state on Diwali comes in the build up to elections in the affected state of Jammu and Kashmir by the end of the year.

Modi also met soldiers based on a Himalayan glacier as he bolstered his Hindu nationalist credentials in what is India's only Muslim-majority state.

'Today India sleeps peacefully because you stay awake day and night' Modi told the soldiers based in the remote Siachen glacier at what has been dubbed the world's highest battleground.

'Indian soldiers are respected across the world for their discipline and determination... I assure the soldiers of my country whether they are at the border or in a cantonment the country of 1.25 billion Indians stand with you.'

Modi's visit comes after a recent flare-up in violence in Kashmir with at least 20 civilian dying in cross-border skirmishes earlier this month amid mutual recriminations over who provoked the firing.

Both countries administer parts of Kashmir but claim sovereignty over the whole of the picturesque Himalayan region which has been a running sore between the two sides ever since independence.

Siachen which was the scene of fierce fighting between India and Pakistan in 1987 is seen as the most inhospitable posting for any soldier.

An estimated 8000 troops have died on the glacier since 1984 almost all of them from avalanches landslides frostbite altitude sickness or heart failure rather than combat.

Modi who won a landslide election in May did invite his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif to his inauguration in a move that raised hopes of genuine progress in ties between the nuclear armed neighbors.

But India called off peace talks last month after Pakistan consulted with Indian Kashmiri separatists in a move some saw as a sign of a tougher stance under the new right-wing government.

More than 200 demonstrators rallied in Pakistani-administered Kashmir on Thursday to protest against Modi's visit to the region chanting anti-India slogans.

'Modi's visit rubs salt in the wounds of Kashmiri flood victims' said one placard in reference to the devastation wrought by deadly floods in the region last month.