India warns Pakistan of consequences if its infrastructure is targeted

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Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri on May 8 warned Pakistan that it will be “entirely” responsible for the consequences arising from any attack on Indian infrastructure. The statement came amid spiralling tensions between the two countries.

Tensions between India and Pakistan reached an all-time high in years on May 8 as several locations in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Rajasthan, particularly Jammu Airport, which also houses an Indian Air Force station, and Pathankot Airbase came under attack after Pakistan resorted to heavy artillery shelling along with drone and loitering munition attacks.

India has, once again, beefed up its security for its strategic infrastructure such as power plants and refineries as the foreign secretary warned Pakistan against any attack on such assets.

“One point that I wanted to also address was the allegations of the targeting of a dam, the Neelam-Jhelum project in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). I want to say that this is an absolute and complete fabrication and a blatant lie…I should note that if this kind of claim is a pretext for targeting Indian infrastructure of a similar nature, Pakistan will be entirely responsible for the consequences that will undoubtedly follow,” said the foreign secretary in a press briefing on May 8 evening.

Power plants such as hydropower projects in Jammu and Kashmir and Rajasthan, which shares borders with Pakistan in the north and the west, have already activated their crisis management plans, power ministry officials said.

To safeguard the power grid, state-owned Grid-India has activated its security operation centre (SOC) to monitor security events and incidents across all regional and national load despatch centres. The SOC has been set up at power grid for round-the-clock monitoring of critical assets.