Migration of people from border areas must be stopped, says Home Minister Rajnath Singh

Home Minister Rajnath Singh interacts with ITBP personnel at Border Out Post in Mana. (Source: PTI Photo)

Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday expressed concern over the migration of people living on the border and said that the State and forces must make every effort to stop this. “The people who live on the border should not migrate. They are a strategic asset for us. We have to give due importance to them. The day they migrate away from the Borders it will not be good for border security, ” said Singh.

The Home Minister was speaking at a civic action programme organised by ITBP at Joshimath in Uttarakhand. Rajnath Singh is on a four-day tour of Uttarakhand to visit remote border outposts and to interact with jawans. The Home Minister on Saturday visited border outposts at Lapthal and Rimkhim in Uttarakhand near Sino-Indian border. While he is the first home Minister to visit Lapthal, his visit to Rimkhim was the only second visit by a home Minister after L K Advani visited the BoP in 1998.

Singh said that ITBP must ensure that it has good relations with the Border people and that it continues to help them. “Make the Border people your friends. Win their trust, build confidence. I appreciate whatever is being done under the Border Area Development Programme (BADP). But it must be done every couple of months. I will ensure that funds under BADP are increased,” Singh said adding that BADP is being implemented in nine blocks of five border districts of Uttarakhand.

Sources in ITBP said that migration of people away from the Border was an issue and it was good that the home minister was seized of the matter. “People are migrating because of loss of livelihood and better opportunities in cities. This is not good for border security as border people are our eyes and ears,” said an ITBP officer.

Home Minister also spoke to local people and said that their welfare was often brought up during talks with the PM. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi is always concerned about border people and says that those who live on the border should be specially taken care of,” Singh said. Singh also expressed concern over high tariffs that ITBP personnel at BoPs such as Rimkhim have to pay to talk to their loved ones and said he would find a solution to the problem. “I know that mobile connectivity is an issue… I have learnt that ITBP men at remote BoPs have to pay Rs 5 per minute to talk to their family. Earlier they had to pay Rs 1. I will deal with this issue. If my jawans want to talk to his family he must do so at Rs 1 per minute.”

Home Minister Rajnath Singh interacts with the ITBP personnel at Border Out Post in Mana. (Source: PT Photos)

The Home Minister said that his ministry was also working on quickly completing pending work on border roads. He said that of 27 roads approved, 10 were in Uttarakhand. Out of 10, four have been completed and two would be completed by the end of the year. He said the rest would be completed by 2019. Uttarakhand CM Trivendra Singh Rawat, who accompanied the Home Minister at the event, used the occasion to announce that his government would give a government job to one family member of any paramilitary personnel from the state who gets martyred on duty.

The CM also said that to stop migration, the government had launched a programme to distribute saplings of four crore walnut plants among border people.