Ahead of Assam's upcoming legislative assembly election, the political arena in India's northeastern state has heated up over the issue of Bangladesh-India border relations.
Ministers from the ruling BJP government, which is trying to stamp its influence in the Congress stronghold state, promised local voters of taking strong actions to address the border issue.
Rajnath Singh, the Indian federal home minister, told a rally in the poll-bound state that the India-Bangladesh border will be completely sealed shortly.
"The border has remained unfenced. I wonder why Congress could not fence the border and allowed unabated influx from Bangladesh into Assam," the minister said on March 30.
"Influx has been continuing ever since Bangladesh was created. I have visited the international border areas with Bangladesh and will soon completely seal Indo-Bangladesh border. I held talks with the Bangladesh government," he said.
Addressing several rallies during the day, the minister also criticised the Tarun Gogoi government for not taking any steps to stop the inflow of fake currency notes from across border either.
Meanwhile, addressing a separate election meeting in central Assam, India's Federal External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said the BJP would take opportunity of the unprecedented level of good relationship with Bangladesh to solve the problem of infiltration.
"We have never had such a good relationship with Bangladesh and we will take this opportunity to ensure a permanent solution to the problem of infiltration... The issue of infiltration is a matter of national security and not vote-bank politics for us," she said yesterday.
The problem of infiltration has persisted for long in Assam with students launching a long-drawn agitation in which so many lives were lost but there has been no solution as the Congress is not interested in resolving it, she claimed.
"For the Congress, the issue of infiltration is a matter of vote-bank politics, but for us it is a matter of security and it is only BJP who can solve the problem," the Union Minister said.
"We believe all problems can be solved through dialogue and we intend to do that with Bangladesh," she said.
Bangladesh has been given 100MW of power from the Palatana power project in Tripura and India is getting Internet connectivity in return, Swaraj added.
