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New Delhi, Sept. 21: The Centre has alerted Assam and Arunachal Pradesh on the resurgence of anti-talks Ulfa and National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB), taking advantage of the security gap created by the recent violence in Assam.
“We have sent many alerts about fresh activity to the states in the past few weeks, one of them recently,” a Union home ministry source said, adding that camps of the militant groups had been noticed in the Manabhum and Kharsang areas of Changlang district in Arunachal Pradesh.
Sources said the anti-talks Ulfa had heightened activity in Changlang over the past few weeks, despite deployment of Assam Rifles and paramilitary forces and fresh recruitment for Arunachal Pradesh police. An Ulfa cadre was killed by security forces last week. The sources said Paresh Barua and NDFB leader Songbijit, next in line to Ranjan Daimary, were both active from Myanmar.
The area has been a stronghold of Naga groups and the NSCN (Khaplang) has offered asylum to other militant leaders for several years.
A “joint operation” planned by Assam and Arunachal Pradesh with the Centre’s help to flush out militants from the inter-state border, has to been put on the back burner because of the recent violence in lower Assam.
A gap in security in the sensitive frontier area with China and Myanmar has been created primarily because Assam police forces had to be diverted to lower Assam since the outbreak of the violence in July and because the sanctioned deployment of paramilitary forces has not been made because of infrastructure constraints.
This year, the cabinet committee on security had approved funds to raise 1,982 state police troops specifically for Tirap and Changlang districts. But till the recruits complete their training, the manpower crunch in security forces operations remains.
The Centre had also cleared deployment of four CRPF battalions in Tirap, Changlang and the newly created Longding district. However, only one battalion has been deployed so far.
Besides, a Supreme Court directive has prevented the deployed CRPF personnel from camping in many of the remote areas. After reports of excessive use of school buildings and other public buildings, the court had ruled that paramilitary forces should not use these in anti-insurgency operations. “We have got some pre-fabricated structures and more will be acquired to facilitate the CRPF,” an official said.
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