Smart border project with Pak, B'desh to ensure demography change attempt is defeated: Amit Shah

New Delhi: Declaring the Centre's resolve to put an end to infiltration from across the eastern border, which it sees as a design to introduce unnatural demographic changes, Union home minister Amit Shah on Friday asked BSF to take up the responsibility of identifying infiltrators and their routes by engaging with the local administration and police, so that a structured mechanism could be put in place to prevent illegal border crossings and expel those who have already infiltrated.

Delivering the Rustomji memorial lecture organised by the BSF here, Shah said the force's border guarding abilities were in for a technology boost in the coming year - it being the force's 60th anniversary - with transformation of the border with Bangladesh and Pakistan into 'smart border'. Smart border will deploy tech solutions like drones, radars, smart cameras etc to detect and counter infiltration, narcotics smuggling, cattle smuggling, fake Indian currency circulation and drones ferrying arms and drugs.

Stating that BJP was in office in the border states of Tripura, Assam and West Bengal, Shah said the party believed in expelling each and every infiltrator from the country. He directed BSF not to limit its duties to border guarding but also keep the channels of communication open with the village patwari, police, district collector, block development officer and superintendent of police to gather details on freshly infiltrated individuals, routes of entry and smuggling networks, so that these routes were systematically shut down.

The minister told BSF officials that the high-power demography mission announced by PM Narendra Modi would start working soon and its charter spelt out.

Commending the BSF and other forces for eliminating Naxalism by the March 31, 2026, deadline, he said many retired IPS officers had initially cautioned the PM and him that it would be an impossible task. "But the govt remained firm and CRPF, BSF, ITBP and various state police together uprooted the 50-year old problem, making the country Naxal-free. "The security viewpoint cannot be to only keep threats under control... the problem has to be eliminated by the root," he said.

Shah praised the BSF for successes in Operation Sindoor, stating that the era of responding to terror attacks with negotiations was gone.