NEW DELHI : Amit Shah announced that the Centre will launch a technology-driven “smart border project” along the India-Bangladesh and India-Pakistan borders by 2027 to strengthen surveillance, curb infiltration and enhance national security. Addressing the annual Rustamji Memorial Lecture organised by the Border Security Force in New Delhi, Shah said the Union government plans to establish a “strong security grid” along the nearly 6,000-km border stretches with Bangladesh and Pakistan using advanced monitoring systems.

“I want to assure BSF troops that we will launch this smart border project in the 60th year of the force’s raising and we will make the Pakistan and Bangladesh borders impenetrable,” Shah said. According to the Home Minister, the project will rely heavily on advanced surveillance technologies, including drones, radars and smart cameras, to improve border management and prevent infiltration.

“The smart border will be aided by technology, drones, radars and smart cameras which will help create an impenetrable border,” he said. Highlighting the Northeast dimension of border security, Shah said the governments of Assam, Tripura and West Bengal support a strict anti-infiltration policy.

“The governments in Tripura, West Bengal and Assam believe that there should be no infiltration from across Indian borders. The Home Ministry will soon hold a meeting with the chief ministers of these states regarding border security,” he said. Shah also urged BSF personnel to remain vigilant against what he described as attempts to alter India’s demographic balance through illegal infiltration.

“We will find each and every infiltrator in the country and send them outside India,” he asserted. The lecture was organised in memory of K F Rustamji, who headed the BSF after the force was established in 1965.

The Home Minister further said that the Centre would soon announce a high-powered demography mission that had been proposed earlier. The remarks are expected to carry political significance in Assam and Tripura, where concerns over illegal infiltration and demographic change have remained sensitive political issues for decades.