New Delhi, April 18: The BSF may soon replace the Assam Rifles on the India-Myanmar border with the home ministry receiving the support of at least one northeastern state.

Manipur is learnt to have written to the home ministry, saying that the Assam Rifles should exclusively be deployed in counter-insurgency duties while the BSF should be deployed on the 1,643km India-Myanmar border. The state shares a 398-km border with the neighbouring country.

“We have received a communication from Manipur and other states also want the BSF to guard the border,” a government source said.

The Assam Rifles will be exclusively deployed for counter-insurgency operations like other paramilitary forces such as the CRPF.

The BSF’s over two lakh personnel guard the country’s borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh and are also engaged in anti-Maoist operations.

Backed by the states, the home ministry is ready to take the proposal to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS).

A complementary proposal is to fence large tracts of the border, starting with a stretch near Moreh in Manipur, the busiest trading point on the border.

This time round, the ministry of defence may have to find fresh ammunition to shoot down the home ministry’s proposal. With a recently changed polity and ushering in of democracy in Myanmar, the CCS may view the proposal in a different light, sources said.

For the past two years, the home ministry has been engaged in a turf war with the defence ministry over control of Assam Rifles. The administration of the oldest paramilitary force is with the home ministry while the army has its operational command.

Union home minister P. Chidambaram had pushed for deploying the BSF on the international border but the army opposed it tooth and nail.

Later the home ministry tweaked its proposal, asking the Assam Rifles to take charge at the border as militants stepped up operations in the border areas.

However, the Assam Rifles is understood to have asked the home ministry to create infrastructure at the border before the force could move in. The army wants more battalions for the Assam Rifles to be able to take charge. The home ministry has sanctioned 22 more battalions in addition to the existing 46 battalions.

“They want a border road but this border is long and hilly so it may not be possible immediately,” an official said, adding that the Assam Rifles has put up posts several kilometres inland.

An Assam Rifles official said “status quo” had been maintained and the additional battalions had not been raised yet.

Of the sanctioned strength of 46 battalions, 31 Assam Rifles battalions are for counter-insurgency and 15 for guarding the border. Some of them are in Mizoram, where there is little insurgency but which has a 510km to guard.

All 15 border guarding battalions are deployed along the border on what is called the company operating base approach and not according to the border outpost system as in case of Bangladesh, China, Nepal or Pakistan. The government seeks to change this approach to the border outpost system with Myanmar, too.

The Myanmar border is peculiar as people of same ethnic origin live on both sides of the border. Therefore, at several points people from both countries can cross over up to 16km on the other side.

There are haats or weekly markets like the one in Namsa in Arunachal Pradesh —Arunachal has a 520km border with Myanmar — where ethnic Myanmarese traditionally transact business. It is this complexity of the border besides the hilly terrain that has led to management problems.

In Manipur, Arunachal and Nagaland, militant groups like the NSCN (IM), NSCN (K), Ulfa, People’s Liberation Army (PLA), United National Liberation Front (UNLF), Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup (KYKL) as well as several factions of Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP) operated out of bases in Myanmar.

Activity of the Coordination Committee (CORCOM) in Manipur and an umbrella outfit of several Indian insurgent groups is a concern for internal security, home ministry sources said. The new proposal, they said, is to counter the new designs of insurgent outfits.