We are hopeful to plug the gaps along the country’s borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh in the next three to five years, BSF Director General KK Sharma has said.

The Border Security Force (BSF) plans to put up a Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System (CIBMS) in areas along the India-Bangladesh border, where it is difficult to put up a fence due to the nature of the terrain as well as check cross-border infiltration and smuggling, Sharma said.

CIBMS is an integration of a number of new gadgets and technologies to ensure electronic surveillance of borders. These provide feeds to BSF personnel at the border outposts, where monitors would be installed.

In case of a threat, quick reaction BSF teams will intervene and neutralize it, the official said.

“As of now, the CIBMS project will be rolled out in the vulnerable areas of India’s border with Bangladesh and Pakistan. We plan to implement the system within the next 3-5 years,” he told PTI in an interview on Friday.

A pilot project of the CIBMS is underway in two 5-km patches along the India-Pakistan border at Jammu and along the India-Bangladesh border at Dhubri in Assam.

Asked about the plans to cover the unfenced border areas between India and Bangladesh, Sharma said, “Fences will be erected wherever we can. Where we cannot erect a fence because of the terrain, the gap will be covered by the CIBMS”.

On the smuggling of fake Indian currency notes (FICN) at the border areas, the BSF DG said the FICN trade has been on the decline since demonetisation and introduction of new currency.

The security features in the new notes are very hard to copy and that is why the amount of FICN seized is not as much as it used to be before demonetisation, he said.

Sharma lauded the pilot of the ‘Crime Free Zone’ project along the Bangladesh border in the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal and said it will be replicated in other parts of the Indo-Bangladesh border.

In a bid to control cross-border crimes and smuggling, the BSF and its Bangladesh counterpart, the Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB), had jointly launched the ‘Crime Free Zone” project on Friday.

The BSF border outposts–Gunarmath and Kalyani–and BGB border outposts–Putkhali and Daulatpur–have been declared as “crime-free” zones.

The aim of the project is to make the area free from illegal, anti-social and criminal activities by integrating efforts of the BSF and BGB in assistance with the district administration, NGOs and border population of both the countries, Sharma added.