The Centre has sanctioned nine new “floating” border outposts (BOPs) to the BSF to check infiltration along the country’s riverine borders along Pakistan and Bangladesh. While six such BOPs will be deployed in the Sundarbans area along border with Bangladesh, three will be operationalised in Rann of Kutch in Gujarat along Indo-Pak border.
“I have seen the BSF working very closely in these areas and I felt there was a dearth of floating BOPs here and hence we have sanctioned new ones,” Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said while inaugurating BSF’s ‘Golden Jubilee’ seminar here. Officials said these new vessels will be procured from indigenous firms in the ongoing fiscal. Presently, the BSF has about six such BOPs on both these frontiers.
Singh was speaking at a seminar on Border Management in India —Challenges and Options, organised by the BSF to commemorate 50 years of its existence. “India will never provoke conflict by being the first to open fire across the borders but will never back off. Our forces will give a befitting reply to shelling and gunfire from across the border,” Singh said, adding, his government’s policy of BSF giving a befitting reply to any unprovoked firing by Pakistan has gone down well in the country.
Speaking at the seminar, Director General of BSF DK Pathak said, “Pakistan’s strategy of waging proxy wars, neighbouring areas flourishing as markets for arms and drugs, systematic use of fake Indian currency notes for funding terrorism and an implicit bid to fuel separatism in Kashmir has kept this (Indo -Pakistan) border alive and dangerous.” “The slow withdrawal of NATO forces, increasing interest of China in both Pakistan and Afghanistan and the ever-changing jihadi landscape of this region and beyond has challenged us to review our strategies,” Pathak added.