India-Pakistan bonhomie: after high, passenger numbers fall

By Jaideep Sarin, IANS

Attari (Punjab) : At a time when trade between India and Pakistan is looking up, movement of people between the two countries through this border checkpost has registered a drop after reaching a high point in 2005-06.


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The total number of incoming and outgoing people has dropped by 20 to 25 percent in 2006-07 over the previous year, figures from the land customs station on the Indian side here show.

The drop in movement is more from the Indian side – nearly 55 percent – between 2005-06 and 2006-07.

In 2005-06, the number of incoming passengers cleared by customs officials here were 24,786 Indians and Pakistanis. Of these, 13,415 were Pakistani nationals and 11,371 were Indian nationals.

A year later (2006-07), the figures of incoming passengers dropped to a total of 19,341 – comprising 13,254 Pakistanis and just 6,087 Indians.

The outgoing passenger figures from India were 17,359 in 2006-07 as against 23,597 in 2005-06 – a drop of nearly 25 percent.

Interestingly, while the numbers of people have gone down, the duty collected by customs authorities has gone up – from Rs.295,000 in 2002-03 to Rs.1.04 million in 2005-06 and a much better Rs.2.6 million in 2006-07. This has shown that “non-commercial trade” – for example, Pakistanis carrying Indian saris back home – has picked up between the two countries.

Commercial trade between both sides – dealing in fresh vegetables, fruits, livestock, meat and certain other limited products – has been worth Rs.600 million so far and is expected to go up by four to five times with trucks from both sides being allowed in a limited way since Oct 1 to cross the border with the cargo.

Till Oct 24, 715 trucks loaded with tomatoes and other vegetables had gone from here to Pakistan. The trade in tomatoes alone in this period was worth Rs.143 million.

Customs officials here attribute the varying figures, particularly from the Indian side, to the Indian cricket team visiting Pakistan in 2005-06 which led to a few thousand more Indians going to Pakistan to watch matches.

Though matches have taken place in India after that, visa restrictions by the two countries continue to come in the way of people-to-people contact.

For the Nov 8 one-day international to be played between India and Pakistan at Mohali near Chandigarh, the Indian side has allowed only 250 visas for cricket lovers though the demand was for 5,000 visas.

“The bonhomie between the two countries reached a peak in 2004-05 and 2005-06. After that, a drop was expected,” a customs official told IANS here.

India had imposed a complete ban on the movement of people between the two countries in January 2002 following the Dec 13, 2001, attack on the Indian parliament by Pakistani-trained terrorists.

With relations showing normalisation after 2003, movement of people was again allowed through this land border.

People have several options, travelling by air, train and buses, to visit the other country. The Samjhauta Express peace train runs between the two countries twice a week. The bus services are between Delhi-Lahore, Amritsar-Lahore and Amritsar-Nankana Sahib.

The Amritsar-Lahore and Amritsar-Nankana Sahib (the birth place of first Sikh guru Nanak Dev located in Pakistan) buses have not received a big response from passengers in the absence of a visa centre either at Amritsar or Lahore to facilitate travel. Only a few hundred passengers travel on these weekly bus services.

At the same time, the number of foreign nationals, many of them of Indian and Pakistani origin but holding passports of other Western countries, has continued to increase steadily. From 4,170 incoming and 3,221 outgoing foreigners respectively crossing this joint land border in 2002-03, the figure rose to 9,284 incoming and 9,213 outgoing foreigners in 2006-07.

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