India and Bangladesh have decided to establish a new communication link between the deputy commanders of their respective border-guarding forces and identified about 99 fresh patches for erecting a fence along their shared border. The decisions were finalised during the biannual director general-level talks between the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) that concluded on Feb 20, sources in the security establishment told PTI.
This was the first time that a high-level meeting between the two forces took place after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh on August 5 last year.
The three-day talks, held from February 18 to February 20, went off in a “cordial manner”, with the Indian side able to “convince” its neighbour about the importance of fencing on the remaining areas of the 4,096-km-long frontier that spans across five Indian states on the eastern flank, the sources said. A total of 864.48 km of the front remains unfenced, including 174.51 km of “non-feasible” gap, according to official data.
The two sides have decided to open a new “hotline” for effective communication after the latest round of DG-level talks. This link will be between the additional director general (ADG) of the BSF eastern command based in Kolkata and his BGB counterpart posted at the force’s headquarters in Dhaka, the sources said.