india

Updated: Mar 06, 2019 12:17 IST

Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday inaugurated a ‘smart fencing’ project aimed at curbing illegal border crossings and crime along the Indo-Bangla border in Assam’s Dhubri district.

The project will cover 61 km of the border where presence of numerous sandbars and river channels in the area where Brahmaputra enters Bangladesh makes it very difficult for Border Security Force (BSF) personnel to safeguard the border effectively.

“There was a long standing demand from the people of Assam that the state’s border with Bangladesh should be sealed perfectly. The new system will address that demand. I think this system should be installed in our borders with all neighbours,” Singh said at Barmanpara in Dhubri district.

The BSF is responsible for protecting 4,096 km of the country’s international border with Bangladesh. While border fences have been erected at many places, in some it is not possible due to geographical barriers.

The project BOLD-QIT (Border Electronically Dominated QRT Interception Technique) under CIBMS (Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System) has been completed by the information and technology wing of BSF.

As part of the project different kinds of sensors were installed in the unfenced riverine areas of Brahmaputra and its tributaries.

The entire span of Brahmaputra on the border has now been covered by data network generated by microwave communication, optical fibre cable, digital mobile radio communication, day and night surveillance cameras and intrusion detection system.

These gadgets will provide feeds to the BSF control rooms on the border and enable quick response teams to thwart any possibility of illegal cross-border crossings and crimes.

The new system is expected to provide respite to the BSF personnel in border areas from round the clock human surveillance.

“Earlier our BSF personnel had to do human patrolling day and night even in areas which were fenced. The new system will address this problem. From now any activity in the border can be traced from control rooms,” Singh said.

This is the first time such a project has been implemented on the Indo-Bangla border. In September last year, Rajnath Singh had inaugurated two such pilot projects of 5 km each on the Indo-Pak border in Jammu.

Illegal immigration from Bangladesh to India and smuggling of cattle from India to Bangladesh are two of the major problems on the Indo-Bangla border.

On Saturday, BSF personnel seized 53 cattle valued at Rs 10.5 lakh at two places on the Indo-Bangla border in Meghalaya while they were being smuggled. Meghalaya shares a 444-km border with Bangladesh.