Amit Shah discusses Bengal's law and order in meeting with state officials

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

Chief secretary Manoj Agarwal and state police chief Siddh Nath Gupta were among the senior officials who attended the meeting held in South Kolkata, sources said.

The meeting also comes weeks after the passage of the stringent West Bengal Public Safety and Control of Anti-Social Activities Act that 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 the construction of a four-km border fence - at a cost of Rs 30 crore - on land newly acquired for two border outposts in Bengal.