The Maharashtra ammunition depot blast and fire echoed in Jammu and Kashmir Assembly with Speaker calling for safety audit of ammunition depots in the State. Though safety is prime in such sensitive establishments but accidents are unpredictable and unavoidable. Near home a month ago there was protest by the residents of Nagorata village for shifting of ammunition depot from Jandrah. The protest was led by National Conference MLA, Devinder Singh Rana demanding shifting of depot to some other location, away from the residential area. Around 4,000 families live near the ammunition depot in Jandrah area who leased their land to the army in 1964. Like that most of these depot’s are of vintage era and have been there when the urbanisation was confined to small pockets. Today with pressure mounting on land by the growing population at some places these dumps are found very near to the human life resulting in unwanted conflicts. It was in April, 2001 a huge fire broke out in the ammunition depot of the Army’s Mamoon Cantonment near Pathankot in Gurdaspur District. The incident comes almost exactly a year after the fire at the army’s Bharatpur Ammunition Depot in Rajasthan. Today all villages near all these ammo depots are literally sitting on power keg. It goes without saying seeing the sensitivity of the issue such incidents cannot be pushed under the carpet as mere accident and sabotage cannot be ruled out. J and K Assembly calling for safety audits of ammo depots in the State holds validity so that an incident of Maharashtra type does not take place in the State keeping the volatile situation. Union Government especially Defence Ministry cannot absolve of the responsibility and must ensure such incidents are not repeated. Armed forces are losing men and hardware to incidents that are extraneous to their service. The spate of accidents took place in Indian Navy in recent years too reminds one clearly that somewhere procedural lacunae could be culprit for such tragedy, which the ministry should address earnestly so that in future such a tragedy could be contained at the earliest causing less loss of human lives.
