Will remove bunkers in phased manner: JK govt

As part of its efforts to reduce the footprints of security personnel, Jammu and Kashmir government today said it was committed to remove or relocate the existing pickets in Srinagar in a phased manner.
"With the normalcy fast returning to the city, the government is committed to remove or relocate the existing bunkers (security pickets) in a phased manner in Srinagar city and its peripheries," the state home minister Sajjad Ahmad Kichloo said here.
Kichloo, accompanied by DGP Ashok Prasad and Srinagar District Development Commissioner Farooq Ahmad Shah, visited Soura and Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical sciences (SKIMS) as a sequent to government's resolve to lower the number of security bunkers.

The minister discussed threadbare shifting of the existing CRPF bunker in the premises of SKIMS and asked the Director to identify a suitable place where the bunker could be relocated.
"Shifting of the existing CRPF bunker will decrease congestion in the area and this place could be utilised for the hospital use," Kichloo said.
As part of the recommendations of an all-party delegation, which visited Kashmir Valley at the peak of 2010 summer unrest, the government started the process of removal of bunkers from various parts of the city and so far over 50 bunkers have been removed or relocated coinciding with reduction in militant violence in the state over the past few years.