The Jammu and Kashmir police alert asking residents to build underground bunkers to prepare for a possible nuclear war is snowballing into a major controversy. Chief minister Omar Abdullah has termed the warning, which comes against the backdrop of tensions set off by recent skirmishes between Indian and Pakistani troops along the LoC, as a “daft idea”.
On the other hand, key separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani perceives it as a threat to the people of Kashmir. “It’s not an ad, rather it is a threat, that if Kashmiris won’t comply (i.e. accept occupation), India will obliterate you with a nuclear bomb,” he tweeted on Wednesday.
Earlier, Mr Abdullah said on the micro-blogging website Twitter, “What a daft idea.” He was responding to a foreign newspaper headline, “Indian Kashmir told to prepare for nuclear war: ‘Build a bunker and stockpile food’.” When a Twitter follower asked, “Why this exercise anyway,” he said, “Damned if I know. I’m not building a bunker & stockpiling food, that’s for sure.”
In yet another tweet, he admitted that the public notice issued by the State Disaster Response Force of the J&K police and published in local newspaper on Monday, was ill-timed. “Yes but it was still a bad idea, especially in terms of the timing and recent events on the LoC,” he said.
Defending the decision, the police authorities said the notice was a routine public awareness exercise, that there was no need to panic and that it should not be connected with any particular situation. IGP Yoginder Koul of the Home Guard, Civil Defence and SDRF, added that “it was issued and got published on the eve of the first raising day of the SDRF in public interest and to make them aware of natural and manmade calamities”.