New Delhi:
All lights will be switched off at the cantonment area in Punjab’s Ferozepur tonight for half-an-hour from 9 pm to 9.30 pm in a blackout exercise amid heightened tension with Pakistan.
To ensure the blackout exercise can be carried out successfully, the Ferozepur Cantonment chief executive officer asked the deputy commissioner and the station headquarters for “support and cooperation”.
The officer asked the Punjab State Power Corporation Ltd (PSPCL) to cut electricity at the exercise’s scheduled time.
“You are requested to ensure adequate security arrangements during this period, given the total blackout,” the Cantonment Board officer said in a letter.
“This rehearsal aims to ensure preparedness and effectiveness in implementing blackout procedures during prevailing war threats,” the officer said.
A man on a battery rickshaw with a loudspeaker drove around town and announced about the planned blackout tonight to civilians in the cantonment neighbourhood.
Tension is high between India and Pakistan after terrorists with cross-border linkages killed 26 tourists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam last month.
India has banned all Pakistani visas and suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, among other measures, as a response to the neighbouring country’s policy of sending terrorists to attack Indian forces and civilians in Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistani forces have also violated the ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) many times in the last few days. Indian forces have responded with effective fire.
India launched an airstrike on a terrorist camp in Pakistan’s Balakot in February 2019 after a Pakistan-linked terrorist killed 40 Indian soldiers in a suicide bomb attack in Pulwama.
In 2016, Indian special forces carried out a surgical strike against targets in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK) across the Line of Control in response to the killing of 19 Indian soldiers at an Indian Army camp near Jammu and Kashmir’s Uri.
