BSF Chief Inspects Jammu-Sialkot Border Security

A BSF spokesman in Jammu said that Mr. Chawdhary during his visit to the Jammu frontier on August 21 and 22 apart from reviewing the border management interacted with the officers and troops. He obtained their feedback on the operational preparedness and the efforts made by the paramilitary force to discourage the infiltration of militants and other undesirable elements and smuggling of illegal weapons and narcotics from across the border.

This was Mr. Chawdhary’s first visit to the Jammu frontier after taking over as head of the BSF and it came ahead of the three-phased Assembly elections in J&K.

The BSF sources said that DIG, Jammu-Kathua range, Shiv Kumar Sharma met Mr. Chawdhary at Pansar border post and discussed the security measures and cooperation between troops and J&K police in the region.

The BSF is independently tasked to guard the 198-km stretch of the India-Pakistan border in Jammu region. Being part of the 2,912 km India-Pakistan border from Gujarat to J&K, it starts at Paharpur in Kathua district and ends at Chicken’s Neck corridor in Akhnoor sector (Jammu district) where the Line of Control (LoC) begins. In India, this 198-km stretch of the borderline is called International Border (IB) but is known as ‘Working Boundary’ in Pakistan as it passes through a “disputed region”. In public parlance it is often referred to as ‘Sialkot-Jammu border’, however.

Both the IB and LoC have witnessed repeated infiltration bids in the recent months following which the anti-infiltration grid along these was strengthened further. Early this year, the authorities had imposed night curfew in several areas along the IB to ensure a better area dominance by the BSF and to foil possible infiltration bids from across the border and other clandestine unlawful activities in the sensitive frontier region.

The 776-km- long LoC is the responsibility of the Indian Army with some BSF battalions placed under its operational control.