Assam Rifles Asked to Prepare List of Myanmar Villages; Facial Recognition in Plan

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has asked the Assam Rifles to prepare a list of villages in Myanmar, within 10 km from the Indian border and share it. The MHA move is in order to monitor the movement of people entering India. 

Reportedly, the government is also looking to deploy face-recognition systems and capture biometrics of Myanmar nationals entering the country, through 43 newly identified border checkpoints along the 1,643-km international border.

Media report quotes senior government official to have said that if the compilation of names of villages is based on “open sources” and on Myanmar’s map as appears in public domain, it won’t be in a position  to authenticate the data.

Notably, despite Assam Rifles is under the administrative control of the Ministry, the operational control lies with the Army.

Reportedly, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) will set up a portal to generate border passes and maintain a database of people entering and leaving the country or those who overstay.

Changing the FMR

The government announced earlier this year that it was scrapping the Free Movement Regime (FMR), which allowed movement of people living within 16 km on either side of the international border without passports and visas.

However, it was reported by media (The Hindu) that the FMR had not been suspended yet and no formal orders have been issued by the Ministry to the effect

The ministry on December 6 came out with new guidelines to regulate the movement of border residents with QR code-enabled passes..

For the first layer of verification, the Assam Rifles was designated as the agency to issue border passes for people entering India from Myanmar. The State police of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur, which share a border with Myanmar, will conduct security searches at the places of stay of the Myanmar residents. The border pass will be valid for up to seven days.

 According to the Ministry, border pass will enable the holders to enter the “border area” for nine purposes - visiting relatives, tourism, business, sports, official duty, medical treatment, border trade affairs, attending seminars, meetings or conferences, and cultural exchange programmes.