61-km unfenced riverine border with B’desh sealed with tech support

Guwahati: A 61-km gaping hole in the Assam-Bangladesh border, which was providing infiltrators and criminals easy access to India through the Brahmaputra, has been finally sealed with non-physical technological barriers on the lines of the method used by Israel on its border with Palestine and the US.
Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday inaugurated the Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System (CIBMS) at the Barmanpara border outpost in Assam’s Dhubri district, five years after he had talked about its effectiveness on the Israel-Palestine border on the Gaza strip while on a trip to Israel.

The system will now enable the BSF to equip the India-Bangladesh border with different kinds of sensors in the unfenced riverine area of Brahmaputra and its tributaries. Now, the entire span of the Brahmaputra has been covered with data network generated by microwave communication, optical fiber cables, digital mobile radio communication, day and night surveillance cameras and intrusion detection system, including unmanned aerial vehicles.

These modern gadgets will provide feeds to BSF control rooms on the border and enable BSF Quick Reaction Teams to thwart any possibility of illegal cross border infiltration or crimes. The new system will not only help BSF curb all type of cross border crimes but also provide respite to the troops from round-the-clock human surveillance.

“Today, this open border of 61-km length is completely sealed using technological solutions. There are a few things that need to be upgraded and it will be done in the next couple of months,” Singh said while addressing a public rally in Dhubri.

“I had seen this system of border protection in Israel and then we decided to have a similar one in India along the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. This system will monitor 60 to 70 km from a command control from where the nearest border outpost can be sent in a matter of three to four seconds if anything suspicious is detected,” Singh said.

The project, which is called Border Electronically Dominated QRT Interception Technique (BOLD-QIT) under CIBMS, was completed in this border in record time.

“At various places, it is not possible to erect border fence due to geographical barriers. The 61-km of border area in Dhubri district, where the Brahmaputra enters into Bangladesh, consists of vast char (riverine islands) and innumerable river channels making border guarding in this area difficult. It is a daunting task, especially during the rainy season,” a BSF spokesman said.

To overcome this problem, the MHA in 2017 decided to go for technological solution besides physical presence of BSF. In January next year, the information and technology wing of the BSF undertook the project and completed it in record time with the technical support of various manufacturers and suppliers.

Earlier, the Union home minister had inaugurated two smart-fencing pilot projects of five kilometers each on the India-Pakistan international border in Jammu in September last year.