Villagers on Punjab border reminded of boy who cried wolf

WAGAH-ATTARI: People living in villages next to the international border with Pakistan in Punjab remain baffled as to why they were asked to vacate their homes, even as BSF Director General KK Sharma denied giving orders for evacuating the villagers.

They, however, claimed that Army personnel had arrived in trucks last Friday and asked them to move out immediately as land mines had to be laid, causing panic and fear among villagers, many of whom fled the area within minutes.

The Opposition parties alleged that this was an operation stagemanaged by the state government, as senior Akali leaders reached the villages soon to announce schemes for the unemployed and promised to release relief funds. Punjab that shares a 553-km border with Pakistan goes to the polls early next year.

“Unless you have clear instructions based on intelligence, the state government should have not done this. The BJP and its allies are thumping their chest on the surgical strikes in Pakistanoccupied Kashmir and are trying to take mileage of it.

This is evident from posters BJP has put up in UP,” said political scientist Surinder Shukla of Panjab University. “The unfortunate thing is that after such an experience the villagers will not take things seriously if a real war is announced,” he added.

On Wednesday, Chamkaur Kaur, 70, of Roran-Walan-Khurd — the last Indian village on the Wagah-Attari border, returned to her farm. “A few Army men in olive green uniforms came and posed as if they would start laying the landmines right now.

This scared us a lot and we fled from our homes as if war had been declared. Now we realise those men came just to make an announcement and never returned after that,” she said.