Bangladesh deploys armed village guards at border

THe edge Guards people's republic of bangladesh (BGB) has placed armed hamlet defence volunteers at thomas more than a dozen spots crosswise the international border in West Bengal and Tripura, BSF personnel on the ground said on Wednesday, the move coming amid mounting crackdown on undocumented immigrants from the neighbouring country and a policy of pushing back people suspected of dubious citizenship.Over the last week, Border Security Force (BSF) personnel at different locations in West Bengal and Tripura reported multiple sightings of Bangladeshi villagers assisting BGB personnel on their side of the border and keeping an eye on the fencing work that has started in nine different districts of West Bengal.BSF personnel reported these sightings primarily in Bangladesh’s border districts such as Chapainawabganj, Thakurgaon and Dinajpur, which share a border with West Bengal, mid-level BSF officials aware of the matter said.BSF officials confirmed that at more than a dozen locations across Bangladesh’s above-mentioned districts, the Bangladesh home ministry has also deployed personnel from Bangladesh Ansar and the Village Defence Party – the country’s paramilitary force to help stop people fleeing back to Bangladesh.BSF personnel on the ground have reported to their seniors the sightings of these armed village volunteers and paramilitary forces personnel on Bangladesh’s border village.“Local villagers in both West Bengal and Tripura along with BSF personnel on ground have spotted armed villagers who are doubling up as volunteers for the BGB. The villagers on our side of the border were told by the Bangladesh citizens across the border that training was held by the BGB before they were deployed. This is due to the crackdown on infiltrators, which has also led to hundreds of Bangladeshi citizens voluntarily trying to flee back to Bangladesh. The BGB has trained villagers to guard the border round-the-clock in different shifts and ensure that even their citizens do not enter their country back illegally,” a BSF officer, who asked not to be named, said.There was no response from the BSF headquarters in Delhi on the ground situation. India shares a 4,096.70 km border with Bangladesh, of which West Bengal shares the longest border at 2216.7 km. Both forces have checkposts on their side of the border. India has at least 1185 border outposts along the border. Every year, the BSF arrests anywhere between 1500-2000 illegal immigrants who enter the fence by bribing touts and taking advantage of terrain where there is no fencing.To be sure, BGB’s training and arming of villagers on their side of the border is not against the rules, but this is an aggressive posturing given the situation along the Indo-Bangladesh border.But in recent years, controversy has mounted over the question of the Bangladesh border and undocumented migrants, especially in the assembly elections of West Bengal and Assam. The Union government has set up a committee to investigate demographics even as senior ministers have alleged that Bangladeshi migrants are illegally entering India.On June 7, West Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said that the new state government had sent back nearly 4,800 illegal immigrants from the state and 836 were held at temporary detention centres. He has also given land to BSF to fence the border across nearly 100 kilometres.Over the past two weeks, BSF and BGB personnel at the border were caught in standoffs at different places over the repatriation of infiltrators detected by the BSF near the border in more than half a dozen different places including, the latest at the Mahendraganj border in Meghalaya.The two forces held flag meetings at the company commander level in many places to resolve the issue of the BGB refusing to accept infiltrators. In New Jalpaiguri, some Bangladeshi citizens had to be brought back to the New Jalpaiguri holding centre because the villagers initially stopped them, and BGB did not admit them as their citizensThe chiefs of the BSF and the BGB held their scheduled biannual conference in New Delhi, which started on Monday.Ahead of the talks, BGB and the Bangladesh home ministry told the Bangladesh media in a statement on Sunday that “illegal push-ins” of infiltrators and border-related matters will be part of the discussion.“In these recent cases, it was the village defence volunteers who had objected to infiltrators(Bangladeshi citizens) entering their country back.As their side of the border does not have a fence, they are helping BGB ensure even their own citizens don’t return illegally. Maybe they also do not want to take a chance and don’t want to take anyone claiming to be their citizens,” the officer quoted above added.