The Government has decided to move ahead with floodlighting all along the Indo-Bangladesh border fence. A stretch of 277-km is already floodlit as part of a pilot project. The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), which met here on Thursday, took up a proposal to extend the project to the rest of the border.

While the pilot floodlighting project covered stretches in West Bengal, the Government now wants to cover another 2,800 km in the rest of the states along the Bangladesh border. Most of the international border with Pakistan is already floodlit. The Union Home Ministry has proposed a Rs 1,300-crore scheme for the Bangladesh border. The work is expected to take about five years to complete.

According to Home Ministry figures, fencing work has been completed along nearly 2,500 km. The Government has sanctioned fencing along 3,300 km of the border. Fencing has been taken up under three phases. Phase I saw construction of 857 km of fence. Phase II, that is underway, is looking at 2,429 km of fencing.

The 4,000-km border with Bangladesh has seen several instances of infiltration of militants and criminals. Another concern has been cattle smuggling — suspected to be used to finance operations of militant outfits like the Harkat-ul-Jihadi-Islami.

The border fence has been a contentious issue in itself, with Bangladesh insisting that it had to come up at a distance of 150 m from the demarcated boundaries in accordance with the 1974 agreement. India has been contesting this interpretation of the agreement.

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