Facilities enjoyed by the Border Security Force will be upgraded during the next five years through a new programme, involving an expenditure of Rs 8,000 crore.

On the anvil are 509 new border outposts, of which 383 will be in the Northeast. And 29 additional battalions will be deployed. Ongoing fencing work along the Indo-Bangla border will continue, to check illegal influx, smuggling, movement of militants and other similar activity.

A Guwahati-based paper giving details of the upgradation programme, said Assam will have 6 new BOPs soon. One problem with wire fencing was the periodic damage suffered on account of the severe floods in the region, which made frequent repairs urgently necessary. In addition, 29 new battalions will also be deployed, along with building of roads fitted with effective lighting arrangements.

The details were finalised during a recent meeting Union Home Minister Mr. P. Chidambaram held with the heads of the Border Roads Organisation, the CPWD, the NBCC, the NPCC, RITES, Engineers India, the EPI and other PSUs.

Much of the fencing on land is complete and the work will be completed all over the Northeast in the next 3 to 4 years. The measures are really a response to a long-standing demand from the NE states to the Centre pressing for effective patrolling by India, especially along the Indo-Bangladesh border.

There were now added anxieties along the Indo-China border at Arunachal Pradesh with India's northern neighbour making territorial claims, accompanied by a series of border violations.

In fact, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Mr. Khandu Dorjee has made a special demand that India shore up the porter tracks and large and small bridges that link the state with the mainland immediately. Altogether 17,000-km-long tracks would have to be made ready and usable, along with 542 bridges. In a communication to the Home Ministry, Mr. Dorjee indicated that a sum of Rs 352 crore may be necessary to complete the work.

Fencing long the West Bengal-Bangladesh border should be complete by October this year, says Mr. Nand Kishore, BSF DG. The CPWD expects the bulk of the job to be over by September itself

Meanwhile, Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan K. Chamling has urged the Centre to make sure that the national highway linking Gangtok to Siliguri was kept open, to ensure the state's link with the mainland. Gangtok, the state capital, was linked to Siliguri in west Bengal by the 92-km-long National Highway 31 A. In recent years, this route has been cut off many times as the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, a Darjeeling-based organisation agitating for a separate Gorkhaland state, has announced and enforced repeated blockades. Most of the disruptions were prolonged, which hit the robust tourism industry in Sikkim very hard.

As the state earns most of its revenues from foreign and domestic tourists, this hurt local economic development as a whole. In the past, Mr. Chamling appealed both to the centre and the West Bengal government to make sure that the highway was not blocked. He had pressed for compensation from west Bengal for the loss of Sikkim's tourism-related earnings. It was not West Bengal which had cut off communication between North Bengal and Sikkim, but the GJM. Yet, for some reasons never explained, Mr. Chamling never took up the problems caused by these disruptions with the GJM leaders. Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram according to media reports, assured Mr. Chamling that his concerns would be addressed.

Meanwhile, prospects for increased tourist traffic to Sikkim brightened with the new linkage of Bagdogra airport with Bangkok. The Bhutanese airline Druk Airways will now operate a flight to Bangkok, making a stopover at Bagdogra. This is the first international flight to land in North Bengal. Trade and tourism circles in Sikkim have welcomed the Druk air move. (IPA)