Thursday, April 1, 2010

BDR bump on rural lightposts

Dhubri, March 31: Hundreds of Bangladeshi nationals from Kacherkuti village in Kurigram district, accompanied by BDR personnel, entered Bhogdanga and Fauksarkuti villages in Assam yesterday and protested against the erection of solar lightposts there.

Bhogdanga and Fauksarkuti villages are located along the Indo-Bangla border, outside the barbed wire fencing, in Dhubri district.

The installation of posts was stalled after the protest, but the villagers of Bhogdanga and Fauksarkuti immediately informed the matter to the company commander of 5 Battalion, BSF, of Kedar border outpost that falls under Golokganj police station.

BSF officials called a flag meeting with the BDR at Bhogdanga, but after a threadbare discussion on installation of solar lightposts, they could not reach any conclusion.

“The BDR insisted on the earlier standing agreement in force that neither country would construct any permanent structure within 150 yards from the zero line,” a BSF official said.

The president of the Bhogdanga-Fauskarkuti Simanta Gaon Bachao (Suraksha) Samiti, Mintu Kumar Roy, expressed resentment over the non-implementation of development projects, including the solar light scheme.

He alleged that BSF officials had failed to convince the BDR in the meeting that the solar electrification was undertaken to improve the quality of life of the villages where people have been living without basic amenities.

The North East Craft And Rural Development Organisation (Necardo) that has been liaising between the organisation and the government also expressed deep resentment over this and demanded chief minister Tarun Gogoi’s intervention to end the impasse.

The director of Necardo, Binoy Bhattacharjee, said they had been trying to carry out development in Bhogdanga and Fauksarkuti but the BDR and the people of Bangladesh had repeatedly raised objections.

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