Union Minister for Commerce Anand Sharma and former HPCC chief Kaul Singh Thakur met Union Home Minister Sushil Shinde in New Delhi and urged him to review the decision to withdraw the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) guarding sensitive areas of Chamba bordering Jammu and Kashmir.
The two leaders said that the withdrawal of the ITBP could jeopardise the state’s security as the force was guarding over 200 km of the border in the precipitous hilly terrain.
They also stressed that the state did not have enough forces, and in case it had to deploy its own force to guard the border, it would have to incur a huge expenditure. Fund-starved Himachal was not in a position to bear the additional expenditure.
They expressed apprehensions that the move could reactivate terrorist groups that had been lying low for the past quite some time.
