New Delhi: The unrest in Kashmir and the resultant disruption of illegal tea supply chain to Pakistan and Afghanistan has hit green tea producers in Assam, The Hindustan Times reported on Friday. It said in a separate story that the 70-day old upsurge has hit construction work on the strategic Indian border roads along the disputed China Line of Actual Control.

Assam produces an estimated 10 million kg of green tea annually. Kashmir, Pakistan and Afghanistan consume 90 per cent of green tea produced in India, the paper said.

“Household consumption of tea in Kashmir is in the bulk. The unrest over there has affected sales, which in turn has made the prices of green tea fall drastically,” The Hindustan Times quoted an official of the Tea Board of India as saying.

“Since July dealers from Punjab have stopped buying green as they are unable to supply it to Kashmir via Jammu,” As a result I have not been able to pay my leaf suppliers and workers,” B. Kashyap, a green tea farmer, said.

Moreover, the ongoing Kashmir unrest may delay India’s plans of scaling up infrastructure along the disputed India-China border in the sensitive Ladakh sector, The Hindustan Times said.

The government on Thursday said issues related to ferrying construction material and equipment to forward areas had hampered works in Ladakh region and would “severely impinge on the completion of strategic roads”. The projects are already years behind schedule.

Of the 73 strategic roads identified for construction along the disputed Line of Actual Control, the defence ministry’s Border Roads Organisation (BRO) is executing six major projects in India-held Kashmir.

According to The Hindustan Times, the BRO was tasked with building 61 such roads with a total length of 3,417 km in J&K, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim. Only 23 strategic roads have been built. All roads should have been completed four years ago.

Before the unrest, BRO had estimated the remaining roads would take at least four more years to complete. However, it will have to revise its deadlines. In a statement issued on Thursday, the defence ministry also flagged concerns about several road projects in India-held Kashmir being hit by

the unrest. The ministry said the loss of over three months of working season in the summer was a matter of serious concern and the BRO would be unable to meet its targets.

Works in Tangdhar, Anantnag, Kupwara and Bandipora are among the worst affected.

Published in Dawn September 24th, 2016