By IANS,
New Delhi : Border guards of India and Bangladesh have decided to increase vigilance at sensitive border outposts and enhance interaction of commanders at the ground level to ensure security along the international border, a senior Border Guard Bangladesh official said Monday.
“During the five-day meet, we had discussions in a very pragmatic way to deal with the situation in the border area… and we have reached certain agreements to be implemented at the ground level,” BGB’s Maj. Gen. Anwar Hussain told reporters at the 35th border co-ordination conference of India’s Border Security Force (BSF) and BGB.
The meet here aimed to sort out various issues along the open border, which is notorious for trans-border crimes like smuggling of arms, drugs, Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN), cattle and illegal migration including human trafficking.
“Both the forces will enhance exchange of information and we will have mini-interactive sessions at regular intervals among various ranks of the commanders on the border, beginning from border-outpost to company and sector commanders level,” Hussain said.
Apart from this, both the forces will sensitise the border population on their sides and emphasise that they to carry valid documents while crossing over to the other side.
“The border guarding forces of both the countries has jointly identified about 23 vulnerable patches of the international border to launch coordinated patrolling. In last six months we have conducted about 1,000 co-ordinated patrols and recently, such patrolling is carried out at night,” said Hussain.
He also said that such coordinated patrolling would improve border management and it would send a strong signal to the criminals and anti-national elements as they would realise that there is strong coordination between the BSF and BGB.
BSF Director General U.K. Bansal said: “Apart from this, BSF and BGB will prepare a fresh list of miscreants and criminals of whom there is adequate evidence and who have been allegedly declared absconders.”
In the meeting, the BSF and BGB also decided to share inputs on movement of criminals on a regular basis, which will improve border management considerably.
The vulnerable patches of the 4,097-km-long border are being manned jointly by the two border forces, through an agreed upon demarcation.