35,000 people to be hit by border fencing in Mizoram

AIZAWL - Over 35,000 people from 45 villages near the India-Bangladesh border need to be rehabilitated to facilitate the fencing of the frontier in Mizoram, state Home Minister R. Lalzirliana said Monday.

“The union home ministry has asked the state government to relocate residents of the border villages and we have requested the Centre to provide funds to rehabilitate them,” the minister said replying to queries of lawmakers in the assembly.

“We are waiting for the home ministry’s response on the issue. The state government had approached Home Minister P. Chidambaram when he visited the northeastern state earlier this year,” the minister said.

Public sector undertakings - National Buildings Construction Corporation Limited (NBCC), Engineering Projects India Limited (EPIL), National Projects Construction Corporation Limited (NPCC) and Border Roads Organisation (BRO) - are fencing 318-km international border in the state.

People, mostly tribals, affected by the fencing on the India-Bangladesh frontier have been occasionally organising protests demanding their rehabilitation.

A Mizoram home ministry official told reporters that the protesters had also called shutdowns on a number of occasions in Mizoram’s four eastern districts of Lawngtla, Lungle, Mamit and Saiha demanding compensation.

The central government is fencing India’s 4,095-km-long border with Bangladesh running through five states - West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram - to curb infiltration, smuggling, trans-border movement of militants and other anti-national activities.

Around 2,900 km of fencing has so far been completed.