The Land Ports Authority (LPAI), which is controlled by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has proposed a complete overhaul of India’s border trade management facilities.

The LPAI was created in March 2012 to build and operate state-of-the-art integrated check-posts (ICPs) with neighbours.

According to sources, in a recent proposal to the ministry, the LPAI expressed its intention to take over all Land Customs Stations (LCS) dotting India’s 15,000-km-long land border, and upgrade them to mini-ICPs aided with a weigh-bridge, warehousing, parking facilities and other amenities.

Operated by the Customs, LCSs suffer from a near-complete lack of basic facilities. Officially, there are 136 such customs stations. However, not all of them are functional.

The proposal, if approved, will remove multiplicity of agencies in managing border infrastructure, cut red-tape, reduce the scope of duty leakage through under-invoicing and help offer standardised services to trade and passengers.

Rough estimates suggest that the cost of developing each mini-ICP on five acres of land should not exceed ₹25 crore.

The LPAI also sought exemption from the HCCAR (Handling of Cargo in Customs Areas Regulations, 2009) regulation of the Customs, to help them run ICPs and mini-ICPs with as much operational freedom as is enjoyed by airports and seaports.

As per the regulation, Customs enjoys discriminatory power to interfere in the day-to-day management of land ports.

Why mini-ICP?

LPAI currently operates five ICPs — two each along the Bangladesh and Nepal borders, and one on the Pakistan side. Two more ICPs — one each on the Myanmar and Bangladesh border — are under construction. In the second phase, 13 ICPs are proposed to be developed.

The facility in Agartala is highly sophisticated. In comparison, even in large LCSs as in Cangrabandha and Panitanki, bordering Bangladesh and Nepal respectively, customs and immigration officials operate from thatched huts and cargo is unloaded in the open on the roadside.

LPAI thinks mini-ICPs will facilitate trade and offer customs greater opportunity to prevent duty leakages, as unscrupulous traders take advantage of the absence of weigh-bridges to under-invoice. In the absence of a sanitised parking zone, security is also compromised at LCSs.

Unaccounted trade

The concern is not baseless.

Third-country goods enter North-East India from Myanmar. The actual trade between India and Bangladesh is perceived to be double the official estimates ($7.5 billion). And the Nikkei Asian Review recently pointed out how Nepal is playing a central role in smuggling gold from China to India.

To stop such activities, the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), which guards the India-Nepal border, had proposed the upgrade of LCSs a couple of years ago. The proposal has now caught the attention of the LPAI.

Mini-ICP at Tripura

To showcase the merit in its proposal, the LPAI is now gearing up to convert Srimantapur and the LCS at Sipahijala district in Tripura, bordering Bibirbazar in Bangladesh, into a mini-ICP.

The Tripura government set up the ₹16 crore immigration and cargo handling facility under the erstwhile ASIDE (Assistance to States for Development of Export Infrastructure and Allied Activities) scheme of the Centre. However, there was no one to operate it. The facility was recently handed over to LPAI.

A similar facility at Sutarkandi in Assam is also lying unused.

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