SHILLONG, SEP 4: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Wednesday said the state government will take up with the Centre for sanctioning of more projects for border area development.
Sangma informed that he would be meeting the union home minister Amit Shah in New Delhi on September 9, for his personal intervention on the matter.
“I will be going to Delhi for the GST Council meeting on September 9. During this visit of mine for the GSTC meeting, I will once again be meeting the home minister and I will be stressing on the need to strengthen and resanction and reallot more projects for the border area development.
We have just finalised the memorandum today and we are also moving in that line,” he said.
Sangma said he had emphasized the need to seal the borders during his earlier meeting with the union home minister in view of the violent situation in neighbouring Bangladesh.
“I have got a categorical reply and message from him (Amit Shah) that nobody will be allowed to enter our borders,” he said. “One-two incidents here and there are different issues but we are not going to see any kind of a formal or any kind of a large scale immigration or movement of people from Bangladesh coming.”
“We are hopeful that the situation is now on the improving side. I should say it is still not deteriorating, but it is slightly stable compared to what it was initially. We are also seeing the trade normalising at the border area. These are good signs. I don’t expect that we will see any major challenges in the coming days but we should be alert, we should be careful,” he stated.
In regards to the issue of unfenced border, Sangma said the government is very much aware about issues related to unfenced borders, which is about 40 to 50 kilometers along the international border.
“In fact when the situation happened, we had detailed and series of meetings including with the BSF and Army and the Meghalaya police at their level also and at my level also and at deputy CM’s level also. Special stress was laid on basically .1250 to 1350 – these are the pillars that are there. .1250 to 1350 were critical area where we know specially from 1250 to 1280 where the fencing is still pending. We are very much aware about it and we have been in discussion with the BSF and BSF is on very high alert in those areas and very good work has been done by BSF,” he added.
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