Ministry of Home Affairs has adequately ruminated on the border situation and framed a policy of coming to the succour of the affected families living close to the LoC/IB, but frequently becoming victims of enemy’s firing. Many innocent civilians have been killed or seriously maimed and injured, houses and cowsheds destroyed and standing crops annihilated. These border dwellers are forced to vacate their houses and seek shelter at some distance along with family members and cattle wealth. For poor villagers this has become the recurring punishment for no fault of theirs. Among various remedial measures to alleviate the suffering of these affected people on the borderline, the Government has adopted two pronged strategy. It has decided to dig bunkers where the affected people can take shelter during the spells of firing and shelling. Secondly, it has offered financial support to various categories of sufferers of border cross firing. In a recently-held high level meeting at the MHA in which Dr. Jitendra Singh, Minister at the PMO and the MP from Kathua-Udhampur Parliamentary constituency also took part, the MHA agreed to reimburse to the State Government the expenditures incurred on account of financial support to various categories of border firing victims like ex-gratia for the kith of those killed, aid to maimed and wounded, compensation for houses destroyed, cattle perished and crops damaged. The State Government had been taking a humanitarian view of the situation and paying compensation to some categories of sufferers but that has been either too meagre or much delayed. The MHA and PMO both were cognizant of this situation and the suffering of the people in question.
Much credit goes to the Dr. Jitendra Singh, Minister at PMO for pursuing the matter at the highest level, the MHA and the PMO both. His efforts have been crowned with success. The affected people will now get enhanced compensation at the rates equal of NDRF and by debit to Security Related Expenditure (SRE) head of the MHA.
The decks stand cleared and now the ball is in the court of the State Government. The next step is that the State Government has to make up proper documentation and recording of the cases under each category and fix the amount of compensation in each case. This documentation has to be authenticated and submitted to the MHA for release of funds. The MHA has taken a very liberal and humanitarian view of the case and hopefully the affected people will no more face delay and other hassles in receiving the amount of compensation.
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