Bhutanese refugees have decided to assemble at the Mechi bridge along the Nepal-India border every Friday calling upon the Indian government to exert its influence to help resolve the 15-year-old refugee impasse, a news report said.

About 80 refugees from different camps under the banner of National Front for Democracy in Bhutan (NFDB) gathered at the bridge Friday and shouted slogans, demanding the intervention of the Indian government to mediate between Nepal and Bhutan for their resettlement, Webindia123.com, an Indian news portal, reported Saturday.

Scores of Indian police personnel were, however, guarding the Indian border so that no refugee could enter this side. Many refugees in the past had tried to return to Bhutan via India. But they failed as the Indian government refused to let the refugees to cross the Indian territory.

The refugees have no other alternate route except Indian roads to enter Bhutan.

NFDB’s spokesman Narad Adhikary said both the governments of India and Bhutan were aware of the plights of the refugees, living at the mercy of grant from the United Nations for the past one and half decades.

Adikari said the delay in the settlement of the refugee problem would cost many lives as many insurgent outfits in the region were luring the youths to take arms rather than go for peaceful movement.

Over 100,000 Bhutanese refugees of Nepali origin are languishing in the seven UNHCR-maintained camps in eastern Nepal for the last 15 years. There have been over a dozen rounds of bilateral talks between Nepal and Bhutan in as many years but to no avail.

While calling upon interntaionalising the issue, refugee leaders have also been urging India to expert its pressure upon Bhutanese monarch Jigme Singye Wangchuk to take back his own bonafide citizens. As per a bilateral treaty, India takes care of the foreign and defense affairs of the tiny Himalayan kingdom.