Union home minister Amit Shah on Thursday sounded an alert on infiltration across the Nepal border and asked the Sashastra Seema Bal to ensure that India’s borders with friendly neighbours are not misused for activities against the country.
The paramilitary force protects India’s 2,450km-long open borders with Nepal and Bhutan.
Shah promised that the Centre would ensure within a year to 18 months that the jawans of all the border-guard forces got to spend at least 100 days a year with their families.
“The SSB must ensure that India’s borders with friendly neighbours are not misused for activities against the country, while seeing to it that the people living in the border areas are not adversely affected,” Shah said at the force’s Raising Day celebrations.
He said certain elements “who do not want to see peace in India are using its open borders, especially the border with Nepal, to enter the country”.
In the past one year, he said, 54 infiltrators --- mostly Pakistanis --- had been caught trying to enter India across the Nepal border.
Shah said the SSB had been doing a good job. “The force has seized banned items worth more than Rs 380 crore at these borders over the past one year, which includes Rs 166 crore worth of narcotics,” he said.
He said India cannot become a global economic power if its borders are not secure, especially when the country has hostile neighbours that are engaged constantly in cross-border terrorism, the stoking of insurgency and illicit trafficking in people, drugs, fake currency and cattle.
