Security experts have questioned home minister Amit Shah’s pledge that a BJP government in Bengal will complete fencing the India-Bangladesh border within 45 days by securing 600 acres, calling such a deadline “unrealistic and ambitious”.

“Fixing such a deadline seems like political rhetoric. No doubt, it will be easier now for the BJP government in Bengal to accelerate the unfinished fencing work along the Bangladesh frontier as the outgoing Trinamool government was not handing over land to the BSF to complete the fencing work,” former BSF director-general Prakash Singh told The Telegraph.

High-intensity efforts on the part of the new government, he said, could speed up the acquisition of land and start construction. “Fencing hundreds of kilometres of the border in 45 days is very ambitious and not realistic,” he said.

Infiltration emerged as a major battleground issue in Bengal between the BJP and Trinamool Congress.

During the high-pitched poll campaign, Shah accused the outgoing Mamata Banerjee government of not giving 600 acres to the BSF to fence the border with Bangladesh, promising to get the job done within 45 days of the BJP forming the government in the state. He accused the outgoing government of intentionally delaying land acquisition to facilitate infiltration.

The BJP claimed there had been an “alarming demographic shift” in Bengal under Trinamool’s “political patronage”. Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah, the BJP also raised the bogey of Bangladeshi “infiltrators” entering India through Bengal and spreading across the entire country.

Speaking to this newspaper, a former Intelligence Bureau director said the 45-day deadline was a “political gimmick”.

“To complete the fencing within that time frame is highly challenging due to land acquisition bottlenecks and terrain challenges,” he said.

Even with political will and administrative cooperation, he said, fencing would require land acquisition that involves legal, rehabilitation and compensation hurdles that take time.

“The 45-day deadline is not feasible at all,” the former IB director said.

India and Bangladesh share a 4,096km border that runs through Bengal, Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Mizoram. Sources said around 2,000km had been fenced, but substantial stretches remained unfenced and required urgent land acquisition.

Last month, Calcutta High Court had reprimanded the Bengal government for failing to comply with its order to hand over land to the BSF to fence the India-Bangladesh border in the state. The court noted that only 8km of the 127.327km of “land already acquired” for which “compensation” had been “received by the state government from
the central government” has been handed to the border guarding force since its January 27 directive.

“Fencing of the unfenced areas is very crucial to make the Bangladesh border secure. It will surely help facilitate a crackdown on infiltration,” Singh said.

BSF sources said the force had earlier identified several vulnerable points along the border, including the riverine stretches, which were currently unfenced.

“The work of sealing some stretches of the border with Bangladesh using smart-technology-aided gadgets has also 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, including cameras, sensors, lasers and radar systems. Sitting inside the designated control rooms, BSF personnel can use the technology to surveil through a monitor. Any infiltration attempt will set off an alarm.

“Sealing the border is next to impossible. What we can do is to make it secure so
that it cannot be breached,” Singh said.

Bangladesh has long objected to the Indian fence, arguing that it violates the 1975 Joint India-Bangladesh Guidelines for Border Authorities under which no defence structures can be built within 150 yards of the zero line of the international border. India maintains that its single-row fence along the border is not a “defence structure”.

Senior BSF officials are also divided over the Union home ministry’s recent controversial and unconventional proposal to deploy crocodiles and snakes into the unfenced riverine areas along the Bangladesh border to curb infiltration and smuggling. Some BSF officials opposed the idea, citing grave safety risks to civilians living along the border areas, especially during floods.

“How would crocodiles and snakes differentiate between Bangladeshis and Indians living close to the zero line of the international border? I do not know who has floated this proposal… It is a silly idea,” Singh had told this newspaper earlier this month.

A home ministry official said the idea was being considered for vulnerable stretches of the international border where fencing was not feasible. Nearly 175km of riverine and swampy terrain has made it difficult to curb infiltration, smuggling and other illegal activities.

“This proposal is being considered as part of a deterrence-first approach to border security. The BSF has been directed to identify such riverine stretches where this plan could be implemented. The riverine gaps are difficult to monitor through standard infrastructure. So far, the proposal is at the discussion stage, and nothing has been finalised yet,” he said.

Polarisation around the issue of illegal infiltration from Bangladesh became a trump card for the BJP’s poll campaign in Bengal.

“These infiltrators are a threat to national security. They take away jobs and the ration for the poor. After we form the government here, we will throw out the infiltrators from Bengal and the entire country,” Shah had said during the campaign.