India-Bangladesh Border Talks To Begin On Feb 16; Fencing, Infiltration Top Agenda

The twice postponed Director General (DG) level border talks between India and Bangladesh are now expected to be held here from February 16 with the issue of fencing and rise in infiltration attempts post the regime change in that country being a major subject of discussion, official sources said Wednesday.

A delegation of the Border Guard Bangladesh is scheduled to hold discussions with their counterparts Border Security Force (BSF) between February 16 and 19 as part of the 55th edition of these bi-annual talks. This will be the first top-level discussion between the two forces post the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government on August 5, 2024.

The engagements of the two sides are being worked upon, official sources told PTI. The dates for these talks were twice postponed last year, they said. The issues related to objections raised by Bangladesh over the construction of "agreed upon" single-row fence at about 92 identified patches covering about 95.8 km of the overall 4,096 km international border between the two neighbours is expected to be taken up during this meeting with "prominence", the sources said.

The joint of record of discussions called JRD, that is signed by the chiefs of the BSF and the BGB at the end of these talks, will be framed on the basis of these discussions, they said. Obstruction to the work of fence construction on this border was underlined last week after India followed by Bangladesh summoned the High Commissioners of the either country in their national capitals.

Bangladesh expressed "deep concern" over the "activities" of the BSF vis-a-vis fence erection and border killings when they called Indian High Commissioner Pranay Verma in Dhaka over the weekend. The next day, India made it clear to the acting Bangladeshi High Commissioner Nural Islam in Delhi that all laid down protocols were being followed while constructing the fence as it conveyed its expectation that "all earlier understandings will be implemented by Bangladesh and that there will be a cooperative approach to combating cross-border crimes."

The Indian side, during the border talks, is expected to put across the instances of spiked up infiltration attempts by Bangladeshi nationals across this front post August last year as these instances are linked to human trafficking and cross-border smuggling. According to the data, as many as 1,956 Bangladeshi nationals were apprehended by BSF troops between August and December last year. This five-month period accounted for more than 50 per cent of the interdictions of Bangladeshi nationals on this front as the entire year saw 3,474 such apprehensions.

During 2023, 4,342 Bangladeshi nationals were caught by the BSF along this front. A senior BSF officer said the single-row fence construction along the front is "continuing with a few issues here and there." Some issues are raised by the Bangladeshi authorities, largely in West Bengal area apart from some places in Assam and Tripura but the work is going on, he said. The DG-level border talks were held annually between 1975 and 1992 but made bi-annual in 1993 with either side alternatively travelling to the national capitals of New Delhi and Dhaka. The last edition was held in Dhaka in March when the Indian delegation travelled to that country.