Ensuring Robust Infrastructure Along Borders — The gross neglect by previous governments resulted in poor infrastructure in border areas. We have corrected this grave error and started constructing roads, railway, telecom towers, optical fibre cables and electricity networks. We will accelerate development of robust infrastructure along the Indo-China, Indo-Pakistan and Indo-Myanmar borders. We will introduce technological solutions on fenced portions to make fencing smarter.

The 2024 promise on borders has two halves: accelerate infrastructure along the China, Pakistan and Myanmar frontiers, and "introduce technological solutions on fenced portions to make fencing smarter".

On the first half, there is a concrete extension to report. The Vibrant Villages Programme, which the same manifesto lists as an achievement covering 662 villages along the northern border, has been extended. Vibrant Villages Programme-II was approved as a central sector scheme "with a total outlay of ₹6839 crores till the Financial Year 2028-29" for villages in blocks abutting international land borders other than the northern one, across 15 states and two union territories. It identifies 1,954 villages, and its ten intervention areas run from road connectivity, energisation and telecom to health and education infrastructure. That is a real widening of scope from one frontier to all of them, and it matches the promise's direction.

What the answers do not contain is progress. The question that produced this answer asked for funds sanctioned, funds released, projects completed, and an assessment of impact on infrastructure, connectivity, livelihoods and essential services. The reply gives the approved outlay and the village count and stops. No expenditure figure, no completion figure, no assessment. That pattern repeats: asked in March 2025 whether border infrastructure faces delays from funding shortages and inter-agency disputes, the Home Ministry replied that it "conducts regular reviews with executing agencies" and that "dedicated State-Level Steering Committees periodically review the progress" — an answer about meetings, not about kilometres.

On the second half, the one number available is not encouraging. Making fencing "smarter" presumes fencing. In February 2025 the ministry stated that of the 4,096.70 km India-Bangladesh border, "A length of 864.482 km of the India-Bangladesh border is yet to be fenced which includes a length of 174.514 km of non-feasible gap." That is roughly a fifth of the border, and the reasons given are structural rather than budgetary: "difficult terrains like marshlands and landslide-prone areas, objections from Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), limited working seasons and delays in land acquisition."

Two of those four — BGB objections and land acquisition — are why the remaining stretch has stayed open for decades, and neither is solved by technology on the fenced portions. The 174.514 km described as "non-feasible" is a stretch the government does not expect to fence at all, which is precisely where electronic surveillance would matter most and where the promise says nothing.

Partly delivered, mid-term. The village-development leg has been widened and funded; the fencing leg has a measured shortfall that the promise's own wording steps around, and the ministry publishes nothing that would show whether the acceleration promised for the China, Pakistan and Myanmar frontiers has happened.