India is deploying along its border with Bangladesh a smart Israel-developed barbed wire system having a 'quick response team' mechanism which strikes when the CCTV-powered control room detects an infiltration attempt.
Indian Border Security Force (BSF) is implementing an ambitious project called the comprehensive integrated border management system (CIBMS) as part of the ruling BJP's plan to completely seal the India-Bangladesh and Indo-Pak borders in the next few years.
The BSF is tasked with guarding the over 6,300km long two borders and its chief, in an interview to PTI, said the new frontier guarding systems will bring a "sea change", for the first time, in this domain.
"There is going to be a paradigm shift in our operational preparedness. As of now, we patrol from point-A to point-B (along the border). What we are now planning is to shift to a QRT (quick reaction team)-based system and a number of new technologies which have not been tried so far are being tested," said KK Sharma, the Director General of BSF.
Sharma explained how the new border guarding mechanism, first along the "volatile" Pakistan border and then at the Indo-Bangla frontier, will work.
"The new equipment and technologies will be integrated and a feed, from CCTV cameras, will go to the border out post where there is a monitor installed.
"This will be monitored round-the-clock by two or three men. Now, we have softwares which are in a position to detect any intrusion or any change in the scenario and create an alarm," he said.
“An automatic alarm will indicate the exact place where this intrusion (at the border) is taking place or an attempt is being made or something is being seen.
"Once we get the alarm, we will zoom our night vision cameras on that and when we come to know what is happening, we will be able to neutralise the threat. This is the idea," Sharma added.
The BSF, raised in 1965 for border guarding roles, is running two pilot projects of 5km each in Jammu in this context and this, Sharma said, will subsequently be set up at four more porous patches: One each along the Indo-Pak IB in Punjab and Gujarat and one each at Tripura, West Bengal and Dhubri (Assam) along the Indo-Bangla border.
The director general said the pilot projects put under trial are by the way of 'proof of concept' method, where an experiment determines if a concept for a particular task is feasible or not.
