NEW DELHI, Jan 13:
To mitigate sufferings of people living in border areas of Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre has asked the State Government to provide suitable land for constructing special structures and bunkers to give shelter to affected villagers whenever there is firing from Pakistan.
Union Home Secretary Anil Goswami has written a letter to the Jammu and Kashmir Government to provide sufficient land for constructing the special structures in a bid to provide shelter to 5,000 border firing-affected families.
If the land was made available, the Government may construct small structure for each of the family so that they can immediately shift whenever there is firing from across the border, official sources said.
The sources said some concrete bunkers in border areas will also be constructed for civilian population to take shelter in case of heavy shelling.
Over 32,000 border villagers were forced to evacuate and take shelter in camps set up by the Government in different phases between August and December due to heavy firing and shelling by Pakistani troops along the International Border and Line of Control (LoC).
Nearly 600 incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistan occurred in 2014, the highest since the truce came into force in 2003, along with the Indo-Pak border witnessing the worst such escalation during August to October which left 13 people, including two security personnel dead.
A total of 19 people, including five jawans, were killed and over 150 injured in such incidents last year.
This proposal was mooted by previous regime of Omar Abdullah but non-availability of the land had pushed the State to abandon the plan.
The villagers were not ready to go to far off places no land was available in nearby places. (PTI)
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