New Delhi, July 17: Union Home Minister Amit Shah Saturday asserted that unfenced gaps along India’s over 7,500-km-long land border will be sealed before 2022, thus covering areas that lead to infiltration and smuggling of arms and narcotics. He also asserted that India’s security policy was either “influenced or was overlapping” with the foreign policy and it was only after Narendra Modi became prime minister that the country got an independent security strategy.
Shah was delivering the annual ‘Rustamji memorial lecture’ instituted by the Border Security Force (BSF) in the memory of its first director general (DG) K F Rustamji.
An officer of the 1938 batch of the British-era Imperial Police, Rustamji headed the 1965 raised force for nine years. He died in 2003.
Shah also gave away gallantry medals to the serving personnel and to the family members of those who were killed in the line of duty from the country’s largest frontier force.
“I assure that there will no gap in our fencing before 2022 (2022 se pehle),” he said. Shah said about three per cent of the unfenced area leaves a “big gap” and makes the border vulnerable for infiltration of terrorists and other border crimes like smuggling of arms, ammunition and narcotics among others.
India has fenced borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh and there are certain areas including the riverines ones which are not fenced.
The Modi government has been plugging these gaps after resolving administrative obstacles and even by talking to neighbouring countries, he said. (PTI)
