New Delhi: Union home minister Amit Shah has announced that the entire 1,643-km-long India-Myanmar border, along the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram in the northeast, will be fenced.Shah said in a social media post on February 6, “The Modi government is committed to building impenetrable borders. It has decided to construct a fence along the entire 1,643-kilometer-long Indo-Myanmar border.” A patrol track along the border would also be made, in order to facilitate better surveillance.This move will end the free movement regime (also known as the FMR) that was only formalised in 2018. The FMR lets people living on either side of the India-Myanmar border enter up to 16 km of the each other’s country without needing a visa. As they often come from the same ethnic group, they are allowed to stay up to two weeks.The move is a step back from the Act East policy, and a setback to the ability to move freely across eastern borders, a practice in place since pre-independence times.Shah gave details of the entire fencing regime being planned, making the principle the same as what governs the India-Bangladesh border. “Out of the total border length, a 10km stretch in Moreh, Manipur, has already been fenced. Furthermore, two pilot projects of fencing through a Hybrid Surveillance System (HSS) are under execution. They will fence a stretch of 1km each in Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur. Additionally, fence works covering approx 20km in Manipur have also been approved, and the work will start soon.”Last month, the minister had announced that India would fence the border along Myanmar to stop free movement, but what he announced yesterday spans a much wider area.At least two chief ministers – one, the only non-NDA chief minister in the northeast, Mizoram’s recently elected chief minister Lalduhoma, and the other an NDA ally, Nagaland chief minister Neiphiu Rio – had spoken up against bids to fence the India-Myanmar border.Lalduhoma had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi last month and discussed issues related to the international border with Myanmar. Lalduhoma had told Union external affairs minister S. Jaishankar that fencing the Indo-Myanmar border will be “unacceptable”.Lalduhoma told Jaishankar in a meeting in New Delhi on January , that “The British had separated the Mizos by carving out Burma from India. They divided the Mizo ethnic people’s land from the ancient days into two parts. That is why we cannot accept the border, instead we always dream of becoming a nation under one administration.” He also brought it up in his meeting with Modi.This is a particularly sore point with the Kuki-Zos of Manipur and Mizoram, and will cut deep, given ethnic ties and the marginalisation they have been particularly conscious of since the violence in Manipur that has flared up and divided the state since over nine months, leaving over 200 dead, over 67,000 persons displaced and at least 250 churches destroyed. The Telegraph reports that Kuki-Zos “have opposed the move to fence the border because the Chins of Myanmar share the same Zo ancestry with the Mizos and the Kukis. The Kuki-Zo people blame the state government and the radical groups for the unrest.”“Given all the mountains and rugged terrain along the border, it is next to impossible to fence the entire frontier. It is also going to destabilise the people-to-people contact that has existed for decades between the people in the border area,” an intelligence bureau official was quoted as telling The Telegraph, underlining the complexity of the task.The security establishment has been highlighting allegations that ‘undocumented immigrants’ from Myanmar are behind the ongoing ethnic violence that has engulfed Manipur.Home minister Shah alluded in his post that the fencing plan is to recommit the Modi government “to building impenetrable borders”, but it is likely that the ethnic conflict that erupted with new tensions in Manipur last year may not experience any closure with this. The state, led by chief minister N. Biren Singh who is seen as divisive by large sections of the tribal minority, could end up having an impact on the entire northeast.