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The Union home ministry’s decision to extend the area of jurisdiction of the Border Security Force (BSF) in Punjab, West Bengal and Assam up to 50 km from India’s international border with Pakistan and Bangladesh is lacking in rationale and bad for its arbitrariness. The ministry notified last week that the BSF’s jurisdiction has been increased from 15 km to 50 km in the three states and reduced from 80 km to 50 km in Gujarat.
The decision has been opposed by the governments in Punjab and West Bengal as an “assault on federalism” as it amounts to an interference in the policing powers of the states without consultation with them. The BSF can search people and premises and make arrests and seizures in its area of jurisdiction. The Punjab government and the Opposition Akali Dal have said that this amounts to bringing half of the state under the Centre’s policing powers.
The ostensible aim of the decision is to curb the smuggling of drugs and weapons across the borders. But it is pointed out that the increase of jurisdiction by another 35 km would not give any greater advantage for the BSF as the first few kilometres are the most crucial in its anti-smuggling operations. No case has been reported of the state police forces refusing to cooperate with the central forces in carrying out their duties.
Most of the borders that Punjab and West Bengal share with Pakistan and Bangladesh are fenced except for some riverine stretches which are also technologically secured. So the addition of more areas does not make much sense. The BSF is also not known to have sought an extension of its jurisdiction. It should be noted that the 15 km jurisdiction was given to the BSF in 1968 because transport and communication facilities in those days were inadequate. With the expansion of these facilities, the argument for a larger jurisdiction actually gets weaker. There is also a contradiction between increasing the BSF jurisdiction in Punjab and simultaneously reducing it in Gujarat. There is no convincing explanation for this.
Law and order is a state subject and so increasing the operational mandate of Central forces in states would naturally be considered as an encroachment into the states’ jurisdiction, especially when such a decision is taken without consultation with the states. In 2012, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the Gujarat Chief Minister, he had opposed a move to expand the BSF’s jurisdiction and called it an “attempt to create a state within a state’’ Federal relations are not at their best now and the Union government should not have given another reason for increasing the distrust through a unilateral and arbitrary decision.