Kolkata: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday chaired a high-level meeting with West Bengal officials in Kolkata to review the state’s law and order situation, with a focus on border security and internal policing.
Chief Secretary Manoj Agarwal and Director General of Police Siddh Nath Gupta were among the senior officials who attended the meeting held in south Kolkata, sources said.
The review comes weeks after the West Bengal Assembly passed the West Bengal Public Safety and Control of Anti-Social Activities Act, a stringent law that significantly expands the state’s powers to combat organised crime, extortion, illegal mining, cybercrime and activities that threaten public order.
Shah is on a three-day visit to West Bengal. On Saturday, he reviewed security arrangements along the 2,217-km India-Bangladesh border in north Bengal and inaugurated Border Security Force (BSF) infrastructure and development projects worth Rs 77.06 crore.
West Bengal shares international borders with Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, making border management a key security priority. Shah has repeatedly voiced concerns over infiltration, cross-border smuggling and law and order in the state, while also highlighting that large stretches of the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal remain unfenced.
During his visit on Saturday, the Union Home Minister inspected a BSF border outpost near Siliguri, where he reviewed indigenous and advanced border surveillance technologies, including a radio-based fence breach detection system that immediately alerts security personnel whenever the border fence is tampered with, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
He also virtually laid the foundation stone for three BSF infrastructure projects worth Rs 47 crore and a 4-km border fencing project worth Rs 30 crore on newly acquired land for two border outposts in the state.
The meeting with state officials is seen as part of the Centre’s broader effort to strengthen internal security and enhance border management in the strategically important eastern state.
