Balurghat, July 1: Identity cards will be issued to villagers living near the barbed wire fence on the Bangladesh border.

At a meeting between the South Dinajpur district administration and top Border Security Force officials, it was decided that Indian citizens — cut off from their farms by the barbed wire and those with their houses on the other side of the border fence — would be issued photo identity cards.

The process, an administrative source said, would be completed by July 31.

The identity cards, to be issued in phases, will be first given to 15,000 residents whose farms lie on the other side of the barbed wire. The barbed fence has been erected 50 yards front the international border.

“The state government is also working on ways to ensure that the villagers, with farms on the other side of the fence, are compensated so that they do not have to cross the fence everyday,” said South Dinajpur district magistrate Sushil Kumar Pal.

The identity card, which will contain details of the individual and a colour photograph, will be the villagers’ passport to cross the fence without being quizzed by the BSF.

A district administration source said the block development officers of all the blocks concerned have been asked to ensure that the issue of the identity cards is completed by July 31. The relationship between the BSF and the border residents took a turn for the worse following the decision to fence the zero point on the border.

A spate of incidents, in which the villagers accused the jawans of harassing them unnecessarily, prompted the district administration to take up the issue with BSF. Several meetings between the district administration and the BSF top brass failed to resolve the issue.

In the latest incident, traders of Samajiya village on the border in Kumargunj block went on an indefinite strike to protest against the BSF’s decision permitting them to bring goods from the Balurghat market only once a week.

Though the traders withdrew their strike after reassurances from the administration, the district magistrate said the BSF would, after talks, allocate a day for purchasing goods from the wholesale market.