GUWAHATI: Bhutan may soon erect concrete walls along its border with India to prevent infiltration of Indian separatists into the Himalayan kingdom.

"There are plans to construct walls along the border areas considering the concerns expressed by the people living in such areas," Bhutan's Home Minister Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley was quoted as saying in the government newspaper Kunesel.

The minister said this while addressing the National Assembly Saturday (July 10) in capital Thimphu.

Bhutan shares a 380-km unfenced border with the Indian states of Assam and West Bengal.

The decision to fence the border comes amid fears expressed by Bhutanese villagers residing on the border with Assam about separatists trying to enter the kingdom once again.

Bhutan launched its first military operation in December after Indian separatists ignored six years of demands to leave bases in the kingdom from which they had staged hit-and-run attacks on Indian targets.

Bhutanese troops destroyed about 30 camps belonging to the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and Kamatapur Liberation Organization (KLO).

The ULFA and NDFB are rebel armies fighting for independent homelands in Assam while KLO wants to have a separate homeland for the Kamatapuri tribe in West Bengal.

Village chiefs from the Samdrup Jongkhar district, adjoining Assam, told the National Assembly there were indications that the militants who fled the kingdom during the military offensive returning again through the porous border.

Bhutan said the government would go ahead with plans to construct the border walls only if it did not strain the close relations the people of the two countries share.

"We will also have to plan the budget. If we find out that the walls are indispensable, we will start the construction," the minister said.

Indo-Asian News Service