Punjab CM asks Amit Shah to look into problems of border farmers

Chandigarh, October 28

Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Thursday night urged Union Home Minister Amit Shah to sympathetically look into the problems being faced by state farmers along the Indo-Pakistan international border.

Addressing a national conference of Home Ministers last evening in Faridabad, the Chief Minister urged Shah to reduce the distance between the border fence and the actual border for the convenience of the farmers cultivating their land across the fence. He advocated that the distance should be reduced to 150-200 m from the current distance of around 1 km. Mann said this would ensure optimum utilisation of the land on the one hand and strengthening the security of the country on the other.

Flagging another issue, the Chief Minister said the Centre should set up a regional centre of the National Security Guards (NSG) at Pathankot. He said during an attack on the Pathankot airbase, the NSG was rushed from Gurgaon, which took a lot of time. Mann said that setting up an NSG centre at Pathankot would help in effective combat of terrorist activities in the entire northern region.

Citing that Punjab is a sensitive state with 553 km of international border, the Chief Minister also batted for the inclusion of state in ‘Category A’ for security reasons, instead of the present ‘Category B’. He said Punjab should be treated on a par with Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and northeastern states as it is prone to terrorism with trans-border drone shipments.

The Chief Minister also pleaded for issuing of pending funds under the Border Area Development Programme (BADP). He rued that these funds had not been disbursed for the past two financial years. He said due to this, no new projects had been started in the state and problems were being faced in the ongoing projects too.