Amit Shah reviews West Bengal law and order, border security

Union Home Minister Amit Shah reviewed West Bengal's law and order and border security with senior state officials in Kolkata during his three-day visit. He also assessed India-Bangladesh border arrangements and inaugurated and launched BSF infrastructure projects worth over Rs 77 crore

Kolkata: Union Home Minister Amit Shah held a meeting with West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari and officials here on Sunday to discuss law and order in the state, which shares a 2,217-km border with Bangladesh and also has frontiers with Nepal and Bhutan.

Chief secretary Manoj Agarwal, Home secretary Sanghamitra Ghosh, state police chief Siddh Nath Gupta and IGP (CID) N R Babu were among the senior officials who attended the meeting held in South Kolkata, sources said.

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Shah reviewed the state’s law and order with the chief minister and top state officials at the meeting, they said. The meeting also comes weeks after the passage of the stringent West Bengal Public Safety and Control of Anti-Social Activities Act, which substantially expanded the state’s powers to tackle organised crime, extortion, illegal mining, cybercrime and public disorder.

On a three-day visit to the state, Shah on Saturday reviewed security arrangements along the India-Bangladesh border in north Bengal, and inaugurated development projects worth Rs 77.06 crore for the BSF.

During the Trinamool Congress rule in the state, Shah had repeatedly expressed concern over infiltration and law and order in the state and the porous border with Bangladesh owing to a large portion of the frontier in Bengal remaining unfenced.

On Saturday, the Union home minister visited a BSF border outpost near Siliguri, inspecting indigenous and state-of-the-art border security technologies, including a radio-based fence breach detection system, which instantly alerts personnel by broadcasting a pre-recorded message whenever the fence is tampered with, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs.

He also virtually laid the foundation for three BSF projects worth Rs 47 crore, and for constructing a four-km border fence at a cost of Rs 30 crore on land newly acquired for two border outposts in Bengal.