Large stretch of Indo-Bangladesh border unfenced: AASU

Dhubri: Students’ union AASU on Monday alleged that a large stretch of the India-Bangladesh border in Assam’s Dhubri district has remained “unfenced” even after 37 years of the signing of the historic Assam Accord. A team of All Assam Students’ Union led by its general secretary Shankar Jyoti Baruah went to the international border in the district on Sunday and expressed their dissatisfaction over the “exposed” boundary. “We are shocked to see that the border between India and Bangladesh along the Gangadhar river in Binnachara area near Golakganj is totally exposed, Baruah said.

He accused both the Centre and the state government of making “false promises on sealing of the border” to the Assamese people, he said. The historic Assam Accord of 1985 has completed its 37th anniversary, and “still one of its major clauses of total sealing of the Indo-Bangla border remains unfulfilled”, Baruah said.

“The government has no interest in protecting the Indo-Bangla border, and in fact, the quality of fence in Assam is poor as compared to that of the India-Pakistan boundary,” he alleged. All promises that the Centre and the state are making about the sealed border and different technologies being used to protect the illegal migration are “false”, the student leader said.

Baruah claimed that AASU had warned the authorities 40 years ago of the outcome of the open international border in Dhubri district, and “now the chief minister is saying that the Jihadi activities in the state have increased”. Assam has become a hotbed of “jihadi activities” with five modules having links with Bangladesh-based terror outfit Ansarul Islam found in five months, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had said earlier this month. “If the Centre had sealed the border in time, threats by the fundamentalists would not have existed,” the student leader said.

The students’ body demanded that the government should use better scientific methods to seal the exposed border. The team of the AASU’s central committee members visited the India-Bangladesh boundary between Pillar 1001 and 1031. The Assam Accord was signed on August 15, 1985, by the Centre, the state government, the AASU, and the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad to end an agitation spearheaded by the students’ organisation against the “illegal entry of foreigners in the state”.