The Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday that the government has decided to construct a fence along the 1,643-kilometre border with Myanmar.
Mr. Shah said that the “Modi government is committed to building impenetrable borders.”
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In a post on ‘X’ the Minister said, ‘It (Government) has decided to construct a fence along the entire 1,643-kilometer Indo-Myanmar border. To facilitate better surveillance, a patrol track along the border will also be paved”.
Surveillance system
“Of the total border length, a 10 km stretch in Moreh, Manipur, has already been fenced. Two pilot projects to create a fence using a Hybrid Surveillance System (HSS) are under execution. They will fence a stretch of 1 km each in Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur.”
Additionally, fencing covering 20 km in Manipur has also been approved, and work will start soon”.
Mr. Shah made a similar announcement on January 20 in Assam. He had said that the government is reconsidering India’s Free Movement Regime (FMG) agreement with Myanmar and will soon end free movement into India.
The fresh announcement comes days after Mr. Shah met Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh in Delhi.
After the meeting, Mr. Singh said that the Centre is set to take some important decisions in the interests of Manipur.
Fencing of the border will effectively end the Free Movement Regime (FMR). Under FMR, every member of the hill tribes, who is either a citizen of India or a citizen of Myanmar, who resides within 16 kilometres of the border can cross the border on production of a border pass, usually valid for a year, and can stay up to two weeks per visit.
Free movement ends
India and Myanmar share an unfenced border and people on either side have familial and ethnic ties which prompted the arrangement in the 1970s. FMR was last revised in 2016.
The Manipur Chief Minister has attributed the ongoing ethnic violence in the State that has claimed around 200 lives since May 2023 to the unregulated movement of people across the porous border.
The Manipur government had already suspended the FMR in 2020, post the COVID-19 pandemic. On September 23 last year the Chief Minister urged the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to cancel the FMR along the India-Myanmar border.
Mizoram and the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland- Isak Muivah (NSCN-IM) among others oppose the move. The Centre is engaged in peace negotiations with NSCN-IM, one of the largest Naga insurgent groups that signed a ceasefire agreement with the Centre in 1997.
The NSCN-IM earlier released a statement that they were against boundary fencing “on our lands that violates our rights as one family”.
