A year after Operation Sindoor, the border district of Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir is still tending its wounds and still waiting for the bunkers that were promised years ago.

Fourteen civilians died here during the cross-border shelling that followed India’s strikes on Pakistan last May. Theirs were, in many ways, the most avoidable deaths of the entire episode. Many of them were killed not inside their homes, but while fleeing because there was nowhere safe to hide.

In 2018, the Narendra Modi government allocated Rs 415 crore for the construction of 14,460 bunkers across the Jammu division – individual shelters near homes for specific families, and larger community bunkers for entire villages. What came of this commitment? To find out, Newslaundry visited four border villages last year: Mandhar in Poonch, and Lam, Pukharni, and Ladoka in Rajouri. Not one of them had enough bunkers for its population. 

One year later, the picture is nearly the same in many parts. 

In Pukharni village in Rajouri, sarpanch Mahmood says his panchayat has 509 households and just 287 bunkers – it needs roughly 200 more. And this is a concern reiterated by sarpanchs across several more villages near the Line of Control.

‘Primary demand has always been bunkers’

In Karmada village, sarpanch Mohammad Sharif says residents were forced to evacuate during Operation Sindoor because the bunkers ran out. Seven or eight houses were damaged in the shelling. “Living close to the border means living in constant fear,” he says. “Constant anxiety about your family’s safety. Our primary demand has always been for bunkers. Yet no new bunkers have been built in the village since 2019.” His village has 500 households. Only 200 have access to a bunker, he says.

Parvinder Singh, the sarpanch of Degwar village, says that after Operation Sindoor, officials were approached repeatedly. “We are not afraid of war,” he says. “We fought alongside the Army in 1965 and 1971. But our one desire is that our children remain safe. That is why we present a singular demand to every official and elected representative who visits our village: provide us with bunkers.” Degwar has around 3,800 residents in 832 households. Back in April 2019, the village wrote to the Deputy Commissioner of Poonch asking for just 70 individual bunkers and 6 community ones. That letter has never been acted upon, he says.

Qasba village, with a population of around 5,000 in roughly 900 households, has 12 community bunkers and three individual ones – a combined maximum capacity of 300 people.

In Poonch town, two new bunkers have been constructed: one at the deputy commissioner’s office and one within the Dak Bungalow complex, though the latter is unfinished. Ahmed Jameel, the sarpanch of Qasba, says: “The two new bunkers that have been constructed are meant for officials. Not a single bunker has been built for the general public.”

In........

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