India is erecting a new non-cut ‘steel fence’ to plug vulnerable and infiltration-prone patches along its sensitive border with Pakistan and Bangladesh, officials have said. They said the single-row fence, with loops of concertina wires on top, is being erected at a 60-km border stretch near Amritsar in Punjab. A ‘pilot project’ of this new fence is also being tested at a 7-km stretch in Assam’s Silchar along India’s border with Bangladesh and is being analysed by the BSF, they said.
This fence will cost about ₹2 crore for a kilometre, official sources said. Based on the feedback of these projects, new fences will be erected at more places where either the old one has worn out or there was no fence owing to geographical challenges.
The sources informed that the Union home ministry has also advanced a technology-based project of deploying ‘laser fences’ along these two borders, to five years as compared to the earlier 10-year deadline. The Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System (CIBMS) that entails deployment of smart fences, advanced surveillance gadgets and anti-infiltration alarms has been speeded up by the border management division under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Border Security Force along these two borders, they said.
These developments are being seen in the backdrop of developments where security agencies have detected the presence of ‘Afghan fighters’ along the India-Pakistan border.
These terror operatives have travelled across borders from Afghanistan resulting in an enhanced vigil by the security forces to thwart infiltration and terrorist bids along the sensitive frontier in Jammu-Kashmir.
Sources said that while infiltration bases and terror launch pads along the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir are still intact, the latest concern of the security agencies are the well-trained terrorists from Afghanistan whose presence along the vulnerable infiltration spots along Pakistan border can be used to foment trouble in the newly-created Union Territory (UT) of Jammu-Kashmir and other locations in the hinterland. The BSF, they said, has also recently completed an exercise to fully “map and identify” vulnerable spots all along these two borders as part of a three-stage exercise carried out last year.
