India puts letters ‘on hold’ as Pakistan stops mail from India in an unprecedented move

It has been more than one and a half months (August 27) since Pakistan has stopped postal mail between India and Pakistan.

According to a report in The Indian Express, this has forced the Indian postal authorities to put mail marked for the country “on hold”. R V Chaudhary, the Director of Postal Services (Mail and Business Development), Delhi, said “It was a unilateral decision on their part. This is the first time they have taken such a stand… We are not sure when the order will be lifted.”

Out of 28 Foreign Post Offices (FPOs) across India notified to deal with international consignments, only Delhi and Mumbai Foreign Post Offices are asked to handle postal mails to and from Pakistan. FPO in Central Delhi’s Kotla Marg acts as a nodal agency for consignments from six states, which are Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh, besides Jammu and Kashmir, while Foreign Post office in Mumbai is the exchange office for the rest of the country.

Delhi FPO Superintendent Satish Kumar said, “Most of the postal mails to Pakistan are dispatched by this office and a majority of them are from Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. It is mostly academic and literary material.” Adding that it is a fraction of what they usually handle, Kumar said he had no details of the numbers over the years, reported The Indian Express

This is for the first time it has happened that mail service has been stopped between the two countries, even through Partition, three wars, and extended tension, Mail service did not stop between India and Pakistan.

According to a report in IANS, Pakistan has stopped sending postal mails to India since the tensions between the neighbours heightened amidst the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, it was learnt on September 26

Media reports quoting Ajay Kumar Roy, Deputy Director-General with the Department of Posts in India, said Pakistan's customs department in an order on August 23 stopped both export and import of mails.

The unilateral order came into effect on August 27.

Letters and publications originating from Pakistan were earlier mailed to India via Saudi Arabia airlines, a report added.

Chandigarh-based Indo-Pak peace activist Chanchal Manohar Singh told IANS that the stopping of the postal service is a gross violation of human rights.

"It is also a setback for the literary world in India. People in Punjab were fond of reading 'Punjab Dey Rang', a quarterly magazine published in Gurmukhi script from Lahore and now it has stopped coming," Singh, who took 18 delegations to Pakistan and received five from Pakistan in 15 years, said.

He is the Chairman of the Society for Promotion of Peace and demanded the immediate restoration of the postal service as it is impacting the common man.