Former JNU student leader and an accused in the Delhi riots case, Sharjeel Imam, had in 2019 urged mobs to sever the Siliguri Corridor or the Chicken’s Neck to cut off the Northeast from the rest of India.
Six years later, AIMIM MLA Tauseef Alam is fighting tooth and nail against the Indian Army’s proposal to establish a military camp near the strategic Siliguri Corridor in Kishanganj, Bihar. Alam says the chosen location is densely populated, has thousands of marginal farmers, and has numerous mosques, making it a site unfit for a military base.
Alam and others have appealed to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to find another piece of land for the project.
The Chicken’s Neck is a critical strip (about 22 km wide at its narrowest and 60 km long) in West Bengal, which links India to its eight northeastern states and lies sandwiched between Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and China. It is considered India’s most vulnerable point geographically.
The army base has been planned between Kochadhaman and Bahadurganj constituencies in Kishanganj, with three new military garrisons and bases in the region in Bamuni, Kishanganj, and Chopra.
Whether it is Imam or Alam, it is hard not to smell a very sinister agenda in opposing any move to protect a stretch so critical for India’s defence and security.
But good news for India’s eastern border has come from its western front. Boosting India’s defence readiness, the Rajasthan High Court has authorised the construction of a new airbase near the India-Pakistan border by dismissing all legal challenges against the land acquisition for the project.
The Indian Air Force facility, designated as a Forward Composite Aviation Base (FCAB), will be set up near Lalgarh Jatan in Sadulshahar tehsil in Rajasthan’s Sri Ganganagar district, a strategic location about 40 km from the India-Pakistan border.
The airbase will allow Indian fighter jets to swiftly reach Pakistani airbases such as Jacobabad, Bholari, and Rahim Yar Khan when required. A judicial bench headed by Justice Nupur Bhati rejected petitions from 58 farmers and landowners who contested the land acquisition for the airbase. It paved the way for the Ministry of Defence to acquire 130.349 hectares of private land and 2.476 hectares of government land for the project.
In its judgment, the High Court bench was particularly blunt. It termed the petitions as attempts to obstruct a defence project of national significance on technical grounds. National security and public interest take precedence over individual concerns, the court observed, declaring that no concessions could be made when the nation’s security is at risk.
The same logic can be applied, the same precedence can be cited to acquire land for the army base near the Chicken’s Neck. Both mosques and marginal farmers can be relocated and compensated as national security is non-negotiable.
