Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) has proposed to its Indian counterpart that short-term visas be issued to travellers between Bangladesh and India in order to curb illegal border crossings.
“A short-term visa issued on arrival for a two or three day stay would improve the situation at the border,” the director general of BGB, Maj Gen Aziz Ahmed, said.
Aziz made the proposal in New Delhi last week at the annual summit conference between the directors general of the BGB and India’s Border Security Force (BSF).
The head of Bangladesh’s frontier force yesterday disclosed the details of the BGB-BSF conference to the media at BGB headquarters in the capital’s Peelkhana area.
Aziz said many people cross the border for short visits to family members or for medical treatment, but make the crossing illegally because acquiring a visa is not always easy.
He said Indian medical visas are extremely difficult to obtain because they require the submission of many documents, compelling many travellers to apply for tourist visas instead.
Simplifying the process will cause more people to cross the border legally, the BGB boss said.
The conference between the two frontier forces commenced on August 3 and culminated on August 6 with the signing of a joint statement of discussions.
Maj Gen Aziz said India suggested an agenda dominated by migration but the BGB opposed it, saying that Bangladesh was soon to become an established middle-income country. “Therefore there is little reason for Bangladeshis to illegally migrate to India.”
The BGB DG said Bangladesh pointed out the number of Indians with work permits working in Bangladesh. Indian expatriates in Bangladesh annually remit $5.6 billion to India.
Aziz said the agenda included seven items and was dominated by the border killing issue.
Responding to this, the BSF said their troopers shot at Bangladeshi civilians because of widespread smuggling in border areas, claiming that two Indian soldiers were killed and 57 injured by smugglers.
“We strenuously rejected this justification and reminded them that 40 Bangladeshis had been killed in 2014 and another 26 had been killed in the last eight months. We asked them to bring this number down to zero,” Aziz said.
“We discussed drugs and arms smuggling and gave a list to the BSF regarding drug production and arms manufacturing in India. The BSF DG assured us that necessary action would be taken,” Aziz said.
On cattle smuggling, the BGB DG said cattle was a sensitive issue for India and officially transactions are not allowed.
“We told the BSF that we can help stop cattle smuggling and have directed our officials not to allow cattle traders to cross the border from our side,” Aziz said.
About the Felani trial issue, Aziz said: “The issue is on the agenda for every DG level conference. But because the topic is discussed at the private pre-conference meeting between the two DGs during which they assure us that a retrial will take place, we do not discuss it later.”
“We share a 539km border with India of which we are only able to cover 110km, leaving 429km unguarded. We discussed setting up border outposts to cover this area,” he added.
“For the first time ever, BSF invite me to observe their passing out parade, which is a point of pride for us,” the BGB boss said.