Bhutan is considering erecting a concrete wall along its border with India to prevent infiltration of Indian separatists into the Himalayan kingdom, a report said.
"There are plans to construct walls along the border areas considering the concerns expressed by the people living in these areas," Bhutan's Home Minister Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley told parliament in the capital Thimphu, as quoted by the government-run newspaper Kuensel.
The National Assembly, Kuensel said, resolved that the home ministry should carry out investigations in the feasibility of building the concrete fence and submit a report during the next parliamentary session.
Bhutan shares a 380-kilometre (236-mile) unfenced border with two Indian states, Assam and West Bengal.
The fencing issue comes in the wake of 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 against the rebels 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), the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), and the Kamatapur Liberation Organisation (KLO).
The ULFA and the NDFB are rebel armies fighting for independent homelands in Assam and the KLO wants to have a separate homeland for the Kamatapuri tribe in West Bengal state.
Village chiefs from the Samdrup Jongkhar district, adjoining Assam, told the National Assembly there were indications of the militants who had fled the kingdom during the military offensive were returning through the porous border.
Thinley said the government would only go ahead with plans to construct walls if it did not strain "close relations" with India.
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