Assam-Bangladesh border sealing to be over year-end

Barbed wire fencing of India's border with Bangladesh along the northeastern state of Assam will be completed by this year-end to prevent illegal infiltration from the neighbouring country, officials said.

"We have set a deadline to complete fencing the border by the end of the year, besides replacing old fencings with new ones," said B.S. Lalli, secretary in-charge of border management in the central home ministry.

The fencing was started four years ago. Assam shares a 272-km land border with Bangladesh, besides some 90 km of river border guarded by Indian Border Security Force (BSF) troopers on motorboats and posts located on sandbars.

"A stretch of only 43 km of the land border remains to be fenced now," the official said.

Besides the barbed wire fences, floodlights would be installed in the border areas to prevent cross-border movement of people at night.

Meanwhile, tension was continuing to build along the border in southern Assam's Cachar district with the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) massing troops by digging trenches and bunkers on its side.

"There is no need to panic as we are on a state of high alert with full force in the area," said Ashwini Kumar Singh, BSF deputy inspector general of the Cachar sector.

"We have not yet asked the border villagers to vacate the area. If the situation demands we may do so for precautionary measures."

Soldiers of the two countries resorted to indiscriminate firing last month near the Harinagar border post in Cachar district, about 320 km south of Guwahati.

"BDR soldiers were also encouraging and instigating their civilians to continue illegal cultivation and sending children inside Indian land," the BSF official said.

The immediate provocation for the June 28 firing was over a strip of land measuring 216 acres near the Surma river which Bangladesh claims is their territory.

India maintains the land is not disputed and falls on the Indian side.

The allegations came a day after the Assam government charged Dhaka of illegally grabbing two sq km of Indian land in western and southern parts of the state.

"A total of about 499.83 acres of Assam's territory has been encroached and occupied by the neighbouring country after the boundary pillars were removed," Assam Revenue Minister Bhumidhar Barman told the Assam assembly.

Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, however, told parliament that the two sq km of land was not forcibly encroached but was under "adverse possession" of Bangladesh.

India has previously charged that Bangladeshi citizens enter Indian territory illegally across the porous border.

Bangladesh denies its nationals cross illegally into India.

The two countries' border forces have clashed over the issue in the past. Sixteen Indian and three Bangladeshi soldiers were killed in 2001 in the deadliest such battle in Assam and Meghalaya.

Article Source: http://www.share.onlypunjab.com

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