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Journalism of Courage
GANDHINAGAR, April 12: At a recent Cabinet meeting state Chief Minister, Keshubhai Patel appointed Haren Pandya as the Minister of State for Home and Border Security. This is the first time that the Gujarat government has appointed a Minister of State for Border Security with independent charge.
Pandya has been entrusted with the task of working out a foolproof plan, in association with the Centre, to make the state8217;s terrestrial border and coastline safe from the prying eyes of infiltrators.
The State government has already asked the Centre to raise two more battalions of border home guards to help the Border Security Force in guarding its terrestrial border, official sources said.
In the past six years, the state8217;s borders along Pakistan as well as the 1600 kms long coastline had been subjected to incessant ravaging by anti-national elements who were using the state for launching subversive activities against the country, the sources stated. After the demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya in1992, RDX, arms and ammunition were smuggled through the Gujarat coast to Porbander in Saurashtra region while another cache arrived through the border with Pakistan and reached Bulsar in south Gujarat.
These explosives were later transhipped to Mumbai where they were used to engineer serial blasts that killed more than 200 people and left thousands injured.
The city bootlegger, Abdul Latif, killed in an encounter in November last year in Ahmedabad, was one of the many criminals who helped anti-nationals to infiltrate into Gujarat across the porous border and unprotected vast coastline, sources said.
Last month, police shot dead six dreaded criminals, associated with the Dawood Ibrahim and Chotta Shakeel gangs, in the walled area of Ahmedabad and seized a huge cache of arms and ammunition, including 10 kgs of RDX, from their possession. The criminals had landed in Ahmedabad with a definite plan to create mayhem in the city which was aborted by swift police action, sources added.
