The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has asked the Assam Rifles to compile and share a list of villages in Myanmar, within 10 km from the Indian border, to monitor the movement of people entering India. The government is also looking to deploy face-recognition systems and capture biometrics of Myanmar nationals entering the country, through 43 newly identified border checkpoints along the 1,643-km international border.
The National Informatics Centre (NIC) will set up a portal to generate border passes and maintain a database of people entering and leaving the country or those who overstay.
However, the Assam Rifles has stated that if at all the compilation of names of villages is based on “open sources” and Myanmar’s map available in public domain, it would not be in a position to authenticate the data, a senior government official told The Hindu.
Though Assam Rifles is under the administrative control of the Ministry, operational control is with the Army.
After announcing earlier this year that it was scrapping the Free Movement Regime (FMR), which allows movement of people living within 16 km on either side of the international border without passports and visas, the Ministry on December 6 finalised new guidelines to regulate the movement of border residents with QR code-enabled passes. As reported by The Hindu on December 25, the FMR had not been suspended yet and no formal orders have been issued by the Ministry to the effect. Myanmar is engulfed in an intensified armed conflict between ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and the military junta.
After the Myanmar military took over the country following a coup on February 1, 2021, over 40,000 refugees belonging to the Chin ethnic group have entered the States of Mizoram and Manipur seeking shelter.
The FMR was brought in place in 1968 due to ethnic and familial relations between people on either side of the largely unfenced north-eastern border.
The Assam Rifles was designated as the agency to issue border passes and conduct first layer of security verification for people entering India from Myanmar. The State police forces in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur, which share a border with Myanmar, will conduct security checks at the place of stay of the Myanmar resident. The border pass will be valid for up to seven days.
The pass will come with a disclaimer that it is not an identity document. According to the Ministry, the holders of the border pass will be permitted to enter the “border area” for nine purposes – visiting relatives, tourism, business, sports, official duty, medical treatment, border trade affairs, attending seminars, meetings or conferences, and cultural exchange programmes.
The Assam Rifles has informed the Ministry that it does not have policing rights or powers under The Customs Act to confiscate banned items during security checks at border checkpoints and State police or officials from the Customs Department be deployed instead.
The paramilitary force also said that recording of biometrics, such as images of iris and fingerprints, be done by officials of the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) who are equipped to perform the task.
The Ministry had asked the Assam Rifles to create designated spots for capturing the photographs of residents seeking border passes and deploy women personnel at each border crossing point.
Published – December 26, 2024 10:28 pm IST