From Our Correspondant

 AGARTALA: The fencing work along Tripura’s international border with neighbouring Bangladesh has been virtually stalled after the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) stopped funding the project.

The MHA has stopped releasing fund after the CPWD failed to submit verified estimate of barbed wire fencing work for the unfenced pockets.

According to latest reports, of the total 856 km Indo-Bangla border, around 600 km border has so far been completed but 163 km border is still remained unfenced posing a serious threat to the internal security.

Sources said, the CPWD, which has been entrusted with preparing estimates of fencing works, has failed to do the same as because there is no engineer to check the draft estimate.

Tripura government has already taken up the issue with MHA but problem still persist centering the verification task which is supposed to do by the CPWD engineer.

The BSF Tripura Frontier admitted there has been tardy pace of fencing work due to various reasons.

Besides, problem related to verification of estimates, hostile condition and opposition from Bangladesh side have also made the task difficult.

Reports said that fencing work had to suspend around 150 pockets due to opposition of Bangladesh and border people.

“However, we have manage to solve about 50 percent of the total objections”, said DIG, Tripura Frontier KN Sual here on Friday. “The 856 km international border with Bangladesh would not be fenced sometime fully before 2014”, he said adding that the international border is scheduled to be completed by March 2012.

Sual further said flood lighting work has been completed along 65 km border out of total 720 km.

“The 65 km stretch is ready for operational but needs to provide service connection”, he said adding that the flood lighting project had progress in another 200 km border.