A total length of 973.413 km of the India-Bangladesh border has remained to be fenced with an Assam share of marginal 52.983 km, Union home ministry informed the Parliament on Wednesday.
Disclosing this in the Rajya Sabha, Union minister of state for home Nityanand Rai said out of the total 4,096.70 km of the India-Bangladesh border, a total of 3,123.287 km of the border has been fenced till date.
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Assam, Meghalaya, West Bengal, Tripura, and Mizoram share their borders with Bangladesh.
As many as 578.653 km of the border area in West Bengal, 117.227 km of border in Meghalaya, 162.923 km of border area in Mizoram and 61.627 km of border area of Tripura sharing Bangladesh still remain to be fenced.
“The fencing work on Indo-Bangladesh Border could not be completed due to difficult terrain, riverine and marshy land, short working season, land acquisition problems, public protests and objections by Border Guard Bangladesh etc. However, the Government is regularly monitoring the progress of fence work for its completion,” Rai said.
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He said the Border Security Force (BSF) has deployed personnel along with floating Border Out Posts (BOPs) and boats for guarding the riverine border area on the India-Bangladesh border.
“Floodlights/High Mast Lights (HML) are installed to cover small river/nallah gaps along the border. As illegal infiltrators enter into the country in clandestine and surreptitious manner, there is no correct estimate of the total number of such illegal infiltrators,” added Rai.
As many as 955 illegal infiltrators have been apprehended by BSF in 2020 along the India-Bangladesh border, 1,109 were apprehended in 2019 and 884 were apprehended in 2018.