Date : 27-03-2024
According to a source, India intends to fence its 1,610-kilometer (1,000-mile) porous border with Myanmar for approximately $3.7 billion within ten years to stop smuggling and other illicit activities.
The center had previously declared that, for reasons of national security and to preserve the demographic makeup of its northeastern region, it would fence the border and revoke the decades-old visa-free travel policy with coup-hit Myanmar for border citizens.
The source, who wished to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the media, stated that a government committee earlier this month approved the fencing’s cost. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet must then approve it. An email requesting comment was not immediately answered by the prime minister’s office or the ministries of home, finance, foreign affairs, information, and broadcasting.
Myanmar has not yet responded to India’s plans for fencing.
Following a military takeover in Myanmar in 2021, hundreds of troops and thousands of civilians have fled to Indian states where there are shared ancestry and family.
This has worried New Delhi because of risk of communal tensions spreading to India.
Some members of the government have also blamed the porous border for abetting the tense situation in Manipur, abutting Myanmar.
There has been bloodshed in Manipur for almost a year between two ethnic groups, one of which is related to the Chin tribe of Myanmar.
The source said that the group of senior Indian officials also decided to construct feeder roads spanning 1,700 km (1,050 miles) that would connect military bases to the border as well as parallel roads running parallel to the fence.
Due to the challenging hilly terrain and the use of technology to prevent intrusion and corrosion, the fence and the adjacent road will cost nearly 125 million rupees per km, more than twice as much as the 55 million per km cost of the border fence with Bangladesh built in 2020, the source said.
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