B’desh border guard chief to visit India in Nov for key meet
The meeting, though routine, is significant this time because it is the first one that will be held after the regime change in Bangladesh on August 5
The chiefs of the border guarding forces of India and Bangladesh have mutually agreed on the dates for the biannual director generals meeting next month, officials aware of the development said, adding that Major General Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman Siddiqui, director general of the Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB), will be in New Delhi for three days in the third week of November.
The meeting, though routine, is significant this time because it is the first one that will be held after the regime change in Bangladesh on August 5. It comes against the backdrop of a string of recent incidents in which the two forces have been locked in an impasse.
The most recent was over BGB guards ostensibly failing to stop armed criminals from entering India. While the Bangladesh high commission lodged a protest over a Bangladeshi national’s death in India on October 7, BSF officials during a sector commandant-level flag meeting informed their counterparts that the armed intruders had crossed into Indian territory, attacked a jawan, and tried to snatch his rifle during which one of the men was shot dead.
The BGB chief will be in Delhi for three days along with his delegation of officers from the country’s foreign and home ministries. The Indian side will be led by BSF director general Daljit Chaudhary, the people cited in the first instance said.
“This is a positive development. There was uncertainty about the visit this time because of the political changes there and thereafter the appointments in the home department of the government there. There are many issues which need to be amicably sorted,” said a senior officer aware of the matter who asked not to be named.
The last DG-level meet was hosted by BGB in Dhaka in March 2024. The talks are hosted twice a year — once each in India and Bangladesh.
Officials said that among the issues that the Indian side will flag will be attacks on jawans; BGB personnel on the ground stopping BSF from carrying out construction works; safety of minorities living in the border villages; arrest of Indian fishermen who accidentally strayed into Bangladeshi territory but were tagged as armed criminals; and attempted mass infiltration into India. After the August 5 regime change in Bangladesh, BGB has also stopped BSF from continuing the ongoing construction work along the border at over half a dozen places.
“It isn’t just citizens from Bangladesh in groups who are attempting to cross into India,” a second official aware of the development said. Just recently, between October 14 and 15, six of the 14 intruders apprehended at the Indo-Bangladesh border in Tripura for climbing the border fence and entering India, were illegal Rohingya migrants. Forces should have been more vigilant, and they should have been stopped on the Bangladesh side of the border.”