Home ministry plans to help people move back to border areas they vacated earlier

NEW DELHI: The home ministry plans to train villagers living near the disputed India-China border to ensure that they are vigilant enough to detect any infiltration or suspicious movement near the Line of Actual Control in Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh.

“This will be a kind of a civic action programme where the villagers will be trained on the model of the Seema Suraksha Bal, which has trained villagers along the Indo-Nepal border on how to keep their eyes and ears open as they stay near the border,” a home ministry official said on Tuesday. The official made it clear, though, that the villagers may not be trained to use arms.

“The first task will be to ensure that the villagers move into the areas near to the border which they have abandoned over the years and migrated over 50 km inside the Indian territory,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “The government wants to bring electricity, water and telecom facility to the large areas near the Indo-China border to enable the villagers to return and stay in these areas which have been left completely vacant right now,” the official added.