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Assam cops and BSF will patrol Indo-Bangla border

Nitin Gogoi in Guwahati

In a major change of policy, the Centre has decided to allow joint patrolling of the Indo-Bangladesh border in the Assam sector by troops of the Border Security Force and the Assam police. Till now, the responsibility of guarding and patrolling the international border has rested solely with the BSF.

This far-reaching decision was taken at a tripartite meeting on implementing the Assam Accord held at New Delhi on Tuesday. The meeting, attended by representatives of the Centre, the Assam government and the All Assam Students Union, all signatories to the August 1985 Assam Accord, was held after a gap of six months. It was chaired by the additional secretary in the home ministry, P D Shenoy, and was attended by the director general of the BSF, E M Ram Mohan, and joint secretary (north-east), G K Pillai, Assam's additional chief secretary, M S Pangtey, AASU president and general secretary Probin Boro and Amiya Bhuyan, and AASU adviser Samujjal Bhattacharya.

The move to allow joint patrolling is seen in Guwahati as a concession to the AASU which has been clamouring for additional forces to check illegal migration from Bangladesh. An unofficial estimate puts the number of illegal Bangladeshi migrants in Assam at 40 lakh out of a population of 2.27 crore. Assam has a 270 km long border with Bangladesh.

The Centre has also given the Assam government a deadline till December 31 to complete the recruitment process in the Prevention of Infiltration Force, in order to operationalise the second line of defence. The state was allocated two battalions of India Reserve Battalion and some 1400 personnel are yet to be recruited.

The meeting also decided that a joint team led by the director general of the BSF, and comprising representatives of the Assam government and the AASU, would visit the two infiltration prone districts of Dhubri and Karimganj sectors between November 14 and 17. This will be followed up by a visit by a team of home ministry officials led by Pillai in January next year.

Union home ministry officials have also decided that henceforth, a monthly review meeting would be held in Assam which would be chaired either by the additional chief secretary, or secretary, Assam Accord implementation, and attended by representatives of the AASU. This meeting of the monitoring group would be followed up by a meeting of home ministry officials to be held every six months.

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