India To Spend Rs 33,000 Cr To Fence Myanmar Border

India plans to spend nearly Rs 30,000 crore to fence its 1,610-km porous border with Myanmar within about a decade, said a source with direct knowledge of the matter, to prevent smuggling and other illegal activities.

Earlier this year, govenrment said that it would fence the border and end a decades-old visa-free movement policy with coup-hit Myanmar for border citizens for reasons of national security and to maintain the demographic structure of its northeastern region.

A government committee earlier this month approved the cost for the fencing, which needs to be approved by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet.

Myanmar has so far not commented on India's fencing plans.

Since a military coup in Myanmar in 2021, thousands of civilians and hundreds of troops have fled from there to Indian states where people on both sides share ethnic and familial ties. This has worried New Delhi because of risk of communal tensions spreading to India.

Some members of the Indian government have also blamed the porous border for abetting the tense situation in the restive northeastern Indian state of Manipur, abutting Myanmar. For nearly a year, Manipur has been engulfed by a civil war-like situation between two ethnic groups, one of which shares lineage with Myanmar's Chin tribe.

The committee of senior Indian officials also agreed to build parallel roads along the fence and 1,700 km of feeder roads connecting military bases to the border, according to a media report.

The fence and the adjoining road will cost nearly Rs 12.5 crore per km, more than double that of the Rs 5.5 crore per km cost for the border fence with Bangladesh built in 2020 because of the difficult hilly terrain and the use of technology to prevent intrusion and corrosion.