Poor funds hold up fence along Indo-Bangla border

While infiltration from Bangladesh continues in different states of the North-East, work on the barbed wire fence along the Indo-Bangladesh ...

While infiltration from Bangladesh continues in different states of the North-East, work on the barbed wire fence along the Indo-Bangladesh border is yet to see completion because of poor flow of funds from the Centre.

Assam government sources said today that though the target for completing the fence had initially been fixed for 2003, the same has been extended to 2006-end due to want of funds. During 2001-02 and 2002-03, for instance, the Centre released only Rs 5 crore to Assam and the state pooled in Rs 16.29 crore to keep the work going.

In a statement in the Assembly, PWD Minister Etuwa Munda had said last month that the Centre, till 2000-01, had sanctioned a total sum of Rs 123.61 crore for the fence and a road along the Indo-Bangla border.

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This year, however, the Centre has earmarked Rs 167 crore — for the second phase aimed at putting a full stop to trans-border infiltration — of which Rs 15 crore has been already released to the Assam government. Funds apart, the progress of work slowed down because of certain operational difficulties pointed out by the BSF, which included the question of how to fence several low-lying patches in Assam and West Bengal.

CM Tarun Gogoi has pleaded with the Government to increase the number of BSF outposts along the Indo-Bangla border so that infiltration can be checked till the fence is completed.

‘‘There should be more border outposts so that one outpost is visible from the other,’’ Gogoi has said.