``Lives of 35 innocent people could have been saved, had the Himachal government taken necessary precautions at the Chamba border immediately after the issue of terrorist movement in Himachal territory was raised by Congress in Vidhan Sabha on July 10,'' he said, while talking to mediapersons here after coming back from Tissa.

Pawar, who led the central Congress team to assess the situation in the affected area, however, could not reach the spot of killing -- Kalaban and Satrundi -- and he had to come back from Tareta village, located 35 kms before the tragedy point, along with CLP leader Virbhadra Singh, following police alert about some suspected movements in the terrain.

Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee president Sat Mahajan went to the exact spot, even as other members of the team, including Vidya Stokes and Chandresh Kumari, returned from Tarela. Pawar held that ever since BJP Government came to power at the centre, there had been no check on militancy in Jammu and Kashmir and its spill over to the peaceful state of Himachal.

He asked Home Minister L.K. Advani to resign immediately on moral grounds as ``he had himself issued a statement in J&K during the Congress regime that those who can not protect the lives of ordinary people have no right to continue in power.'' He said it was high time the ruling party stopped giving a political colour to the militancy issue and took it seriously as was done by the Congress in case of Punjab and North-East.

The Congress leader said that government must take concrete steps to arrange a regular police patrol or Army combing on the Chamba-Doda border to restore the faith of the poor Tissa people. ``I have personally talked to a number of Tissa villagers. They are scared, they have stop working and are afraid to come out of their homes, alone. They need urgent attention,'' he said, adding that a strict vigil on Chamba and Doda border was of utmost necessity at the moment lest the situation turned critical.

Former chief minister and CLP leader Virbhadra Singh said the Dhumal government was trying to underplay the whole matter to hide their own mistakes. ``We have to neither underplay nor overplay it at the moment, but only face the reality, where 35 people have been made to pay the price of government apathy,'' he commented, demanding immediate heavy deployment of forces at the border area.

The Pawar team, which would submit its report to the Congress chief shortly, however, rejected the point that there was any communal tension in Tissa area. ``The involvement of Muslims and Gujjar nomads has yet not been confirmed,'' the team members held.