The Border Security Force has deployed additional troops in the minority-dominated districts of Murshidabad and Malda and along the Bangladesh frontier and stepped up surveillance with more focus on the unfenced stretches, sources said.
“Increased patrolling has been ordered, especially in the border villages of the
two districts along the frontier, to crack down on infiltrators and smuggling,” said a BSF official.
The date for the Bengal Assembly polls is likely to be announced soon. The BJP’s key plank has been alleged infiltration by Bangladeshi Muslims, their illegal entry purportedly facilitated with fake documents issued by local authorities in Bengal.
The preliminary “final” list of the special intensive revision (SIR) of poll rolls, published by the Election Commission last week, revealed that nearly one-third of 60 lakh-plus voters pending adjudication are from the two minority-dominated districts on the Bangladesh border — Murshidabad and Malda.
Murshidabad tops the list with 11.01 lakh such voters, followed by Malda with 8.28 lakh. Both districts share a border with Bangladesh and have high Muslim populations — 66 per cent in Murshidabad and 51 per cent in Malda, according to the 2011 census.
The BSF is deployed along the 4,096km-long international border with Bangladesh
that runs through Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram.
The sources in the BSF said the force had earlier identified several vulnerable points without fences along the border. “The work of sealing the border with Bangladesh using smart-technology-aided gadgets has not been completed yet,” the official said.
The smart-technology-aided fence is supposed to work both as a surveillance tool and a warning system through sophisticated devices such as cameras, sensors, lasers and radar systems.
Sitting inside the designated control rooms, BSF personnel can keep surveillance through a monitor using the technology. The alarms will go off as soon as there is any infiltration attempt.