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Published : 12 Jan 2025, 01:45 PM
Home Advisor Jahangir Alam Chowdhury has said the Border Guard Bangladesh and the people have thwarted Indian efforts to erect barbed wire fences at five location at the borders.
India was looking to construct barbed wire fences inside the 150-yard no man’s land at Lalmonirhat’s Tin Bigha Corridor, Naogaon’s Patnitala and three other places, Jahangir Alam said on Sunday.
“The BSF [Border Security Force] and the BGB held a discussion over it. India stopped work after the BGB took a firm stand.”
Referring to the 1972 India-Bangladesh Treaty of Friendship, Jahangir Alam said: “None of us [Bangladesh or India] can establish anything with defence capability or potentiality inside this 150 yards. The second point is if any of us wants to carry out development work inside the 150 yard Zero Line, we have to take each other’s consent. It can’t be done without consent.”
“The third is that India has already placed barbed wire fencing along 3,271km of 4,156km of the border, with 885km still remaining.”
“During the tenure of our last government India carried out several uneven tasks between 2010 to 2023, but shouldn’t have. Our government gave them so many opportunities.”
In this period, India placed barbed wire fencing at 160 locations while issues remained at 78 other places. Problems recently emerged at Chapainawabganj, Tin Bigha Corridor and Patnitala, he mentioned.
He criticised the previous government for making written agreements that were inappropriate. He said: “We interfere if they want to fence the border but legally we can’t do that. It’s already signed and we signed it.”
Jahangir indicated that the foreign ministry would summon Indian High Commissioner Pranay Kumar Verma to protest these matters.
