The state will build 60 bunkers in the International Border area to protect the locals.
After some of the worst ceasefire violations over the last two years, the Jammu and Kashmir government is building underground bunkers at the International Border in Jammu to safeguard the locals.
The bunkers - huge concrete structures built underground -- will have a capacity to accommodate more than 100 people each.
In the first phase four bunkers are being built at sensitive locations of RS Pura district. Ultimately, the state will build 60 such bunkers in the area.
"We will construct bunkers in all the border villages, if need be, we will construct two bunkers in each village, so that people can use themselves to escape the shelling," said Shyam Choudhary, the lawmaker from the RS Pura sector, which right at the international border.
In 2014, 19 people died and 150 were injured in more than 550 incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistan along the International Border and the Line of Control.
In the '90s, hundreds of people migrated from their villages close to the international border when shelling from across the border was a daily routine. After the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in 2003, many returned home. The ceasefire violations over the last two years have brought the horror back.
Even so, this is the first time the local administration is constructing bunkers for the civilians close to the Zero Line.
"Had this been done some years ago, so many people would not have been killed," said Darshan Lal, a resident of Karotona village, whose brother was killed by a Pakistani shell in 2002.
Of the six sectors at the border, Arnia has suffered the heaviest toll from Pakistani shelling. Since 2014, five people have died across its four villages.