Poonch-Rawalkot bus service: a dream comes true

Poonch, Jun 20: India and Pakistan today took another major initiative to facilitate people-to-people contacts across the LoC by inaugurating a bus service between Poonch and Rawalkote, more than a year after the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad transport link was launched.

Amid elaborate security arrangements and cheers of locals, United Progressive Alliance Chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi flagged off the bus service from Chakan-da-Bagh in Poonch district.

Mrs Gandhi was accompanied by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and PDP leader Mohammed Sayeed.

While a batch of 66 passengers, including 36 PoK residents, left from Poonch to Rawalkote in PoK, the bus from Rawalkote carried 45 passengers, including 15 residents of Poonch who had earlier gone to PoK to meet their relatives across the LoC.

The decision to open the new link, the first south of the Pir Panjal Range, was taken after talks between India and Pakistan in New Delhi on May 3.

Almost each family living in Poonch, which witnessed extensive fighting in 1947-48, has relatives across the Line of Control (LoC), with people on either side sharing a common language and culture.

Now with the long wait over, the emotions, excitement and palpitation are high among the people of this border district of the state as their nearly six-decade wait for reuniting with separated family members and friends in PoK has come to an end, as the bus to Rawalakote, barely 40 km from here, has started.

The sentiment is well reflected in a sign post in Urdu, put up by the authorities at the last point along the LoC, which says, ''Sarhad zameen bant sakti hain, par dilon ko nahin (Borders can divide land but not hearts).'' With the launch of the bus service, the fortightly crossing on foot from Chakan-da-Bagh, the last point on the Indian side of the LoC, where passengers were dropped by buses coming from Poonch, has come to an end.

The ten-km road from Poonch to the LoC was laid in record time of four months by civil and Army authorities till the last point on the LoC. A new customs and immigration building, painted in vibrant colours, has also come up.

UNI

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