NSA Ajit Doval heads to Kashmir for review of security

National security adviser Ajit Doval will leave for the Kashmir Valley on Tuesday to assess the security situation and devise strategy with the Mufti Mohammad Sayeed government on checking radicalization of youth.

Updated on: Jul 21, 2015, 09:01:06 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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National security adviser Ajit Doval will leave for the Kashmir Valley on Tuesday to assess the security situation and devise strategy with the Mufti Mohammad Sayeed government on checking radicalization of youth.

Government sources said Doval will meet governor NN Vohra, chief minister Sayeed, and Army and para-military force commanders during his two-day visit to understand the state of cross-border infiltration and terrorism in the Valley.

The visit will also help Doval to formulate India’s response during talks on terrorism with his Pakistan counterpart Sartaj Aziz, likely in New Delhi next month.

The meetings between the two NSAs, Directors-General of the Border Security Force and Pakistan Rangers as well as the two Directors-General of Military Operations (DGMOs) are expected to be reviewed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York in late September.

While Doval is keen to discuss terrorism with his Pakistani counterpart, his immediate concern is growing attraction of Kashmiri youth towards Islamic State (IS) ideology over the Internet. There are strong reports about internal recruitment in the Valley with the youth taking to militancy in the name of religion and not freedom.

“The romanticism of IS over Internet has affected the University studying youth and could lead to political violence in the future,” said a senior official.

It is understood that Doval will discuss strategy on countering Islamic radicalization with Sayeed but at the same time emphasize good governance by the ruling PDP-BJP government based on empowering the state administration and police.

While the state government is harping on a Central package as panacea to all problems, there are reports of disconnect between the two allies, which in turn is seriously affecting the rebuilding work in the Valley. Also on the NSA’s agenda is the possibility of appointment of a new chief secretary and police chief in the state.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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