Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday inaugurated the project BOLD-QIT (Border Electronically Dominated QRT Interception Technique) under Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System (CIBMS) along Indo-Bangla border in western Assam’s Dhubri district.
This is the second project of similar nature as the Union government had earlier fenced 10 kms of Indo-Pakistan border using technologies like thermal imagers, infra-red and laser-based intruder alarms, aerostats for aerial surveillance, unattended ground sensors that can help detect intrusion bids, radars, sonar systems to secure riverine borders, fibre-optic sensors and a command and control system that shall receive data from all surveillance devices in real time.
“We have made operationalized a similar project of “smart” border fencing built under the CIBMS programme in Jammu last year. Over a period of time the complete border will be covered under similar technology,” said Singh while interacting with media later in the day.
He said that the implementation of CIBMS projects on Indo-Pakistan and Indo-Bangla border will enhance the capabilities of Border Security Force (BSF).
He said that the CIBMS project will vastly improve the capability of BSF in detecting and controlling the cross border crimes like illegal infiltration, smuggling of contraband goods, human trafficking and cross border terrorism etc.
At Dhubri, where BOLD-QIT project has been implemented along riverine border, it was not feasible to construct border fencing. The 61 kms of border area in Dhubri where River Brahmaputra enters into Bangladesh consists of vast char lands and innumerable river channels thus making border guarding in this area a challenging task especially during rainy season.
To address these problems ministry of home affairs has decided to use technological solutions to enhance capabilities of manpower of Border Security Force (BSF) deployed on the ground.
As part of CIBMS, these two projects were undertaken. Implementation of this project will help in integration of manpower, sensors, networks, intelligence and command and control solutions to improve situational awareness at different levels of hierarchy to facilitate prompt and informed decision making and quick reaction to emerging situations.