Guwahati, Feb. 14: The Centre today announced a series of steps to seal the porous Indo-Bangladesh border in Assam, but the All-Assam Students? Union (AASU) said the NDA government had yet to display the level of seriousness required to stop infiltration.
The steps, unveiled at a tripartite meeting here on implementation of the 1985 Assam Accord, include deployment of more BSF companies and installation of floodlights along the border within the next six months. Representatives of the Centre, the Assam government and the All-Assam Students? Union (AASU) attended the meeting.
AASU general secretary Amiyo Kumar Bhuyan told The Telegraph after the meeting that the Centre had agreed to engage a new agency in the border-fencing project. The students? organisation believes that the state public works department has been ?too slow? in fencing the border.
After reviewing implementation of the Assam Accord, the tripartite meeting reached a consensus on the issue of joint patrolling of the border. The AASU leadership and officials agreed that the BSF and Assam police should start implementing the decision taken at a previous tripartite meeting and endorsed thereafter, Bhuyan said.
The AASU leaders reiterated their demand to set a timeframe for implementation of the accord, to which the secretary of border management in the Union home ministry, R.C.A. Jain, agreed.