Effective Border Management

Yunus Dar

India shares its borders, running into thousands of kilometres, with many countries. The most challenging stretch is the India-Pakistan border (IPB), which measures approximately 3,323 km, out of which some 1,225 km is in Jammu and Kashmir. The border extends to 553 km in Punjab, 1,037 km in Rajasthan and 508 km in Gujarat.

Home minister Rajnath Singh inaugurating the CIBMS project, in Jammu on 17 September 2018, along with DG BSF, K.K. Sharma

Border Out Posts (BOPs), which constitute the main workstations of the Border Security Force (BSF) along the borders, provide appropriate show of force to deter trans-border infiltration. The current strength of BOPs along the IPB currently stands at 656 held by the BSF. There is also a proposal to construct 93 composite BOPs along the IPB, which are supposed to provide the necessary infrastructure for accommodation, logistic support and combat functions of the BSF deployed along the border. The proposal is slated to be finished by 2020. More initiatives to curb border infiltration includes deployment of floodlights, 2043.7 km of which were sanctioned by the government along the IPB and more than 90 per cent of that has been completed, according to government sources. Fencing also significantly helps to reduce infiltration and over 2000 km of the IPB have been secured with appropriate fencing.

The latest innovation by the government of India has been the induction of Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System (CIBMS) along the borders. As the name suggests, CIBMS integrates all the available technologies and gadgets to ensure electronic surveillance of the border areas. Two pilot projects covering about 71 km on the IPB (10 km) and Indo-Bangladesh Border (IBB) (61 km) of CIBMS have been completed. The stage has been set now for taking up stage-II and stage-III covering about 1,955 km of the border which cannot be physically fenced. The CIBMS project is expected to vastly improve the capability of the BSF in detecting and controlling cross-border crimes like illegal infiltration, smuggling of contraband goods, human trafficking and cross-border terrorism.

According to the government, the CIBMS involves deployment of a range of state-of-the-art surveillance technologies — thermal imagers, infra-red and laser-based intruder alarms, aerostats for aerial surveillance, unattended ground sensors that can help detect intrusion bids, radar