Centre Urges State to Provide Land for Fence: Union Home Secretary Holds Two Meetings with Bengal Officials in October

According to an official in Delhi, the Centre had every reason to believe that the project was getting delayed because of the state government

A milestone on an unfenced area of the Bangladesh border in Jalpaiguri's Boroshoshi.: File picture

Pranesh Sarkar, TT, Calcutta, October 30, 2024: The Centre has stressed the completion of wired fencing along the Bangladesh border and asked the Bengal government to expedite the process of handing over land to wind up the project at the earliest.

Union home secretary Govind Mohan held a meeting with Bengal chief secretary Manoj Pant and additional chief secretary in the land and land reforms department Vivek Kumar in Calcutta on Sunday to discuss the hurdles to getting land for fencing the border.

This was Mohan's second meeting on the issue within two weeks with state government officials.

“The back-to-back meetings on the issue show the Centre's urgency. The Union home secretary urged the state government to hand over the required land to the ministry to complete the project at the earliest. He reminded the state government officials that the Centre has already allotted funds to acquire land,” said a senior government official aware of the development.

Sources in the state administration said that the state shares a total of 2,216.7km border with Bangladesh. Some 80 per cent of the total border has been already secured by fencing or through technological solutions.

“But the Centre wants to put up fencing on the remaining 20 per cent, and feels that the state has been delaying the land handover,” said another official.

According to an official in Delhi, the Centre had every reason to believe that the project was getting delayed because of the state government.

“The ministry allowed the state to go for direct purchase of land for the project instead of acquisition since the Bengal government did not adopt the new land acquisition Act. If the project has not progressed much in the past year or so, the Centre has reasons to believe that the state government has not put enough effort into the project,” said the Delhi bureaucrat.

A senior Nabanna official told The Telegraph that the state was in the process of buying the required land for the project.

“We are progressing and expect that the process will be completed soon. The Union home secretary reviewed the situation and we shared with him details of our progress,” said the official.

A senior official said that the Centre had set a target of completing wired fencing along the Bangladesh border by March 2019 but the project had come to a halt in Bengal because of land hurdles.

Now, the hurry to complete fencing has assumed fresh significance in the backdrop of the BJP and the TMC trading charges over illegal infiltration.

During his visit to Bengal on Sunday, Union home minister Amit Shah alleged that illegal infiltration from Bangladesh was disrupting peace in Bengal.

Shah's claim was not new. Central BJP leaders have held the TMC responsible for infiltration from Bangladesh repeatedly in the past.

The ruling TMC, in turn, has always countered the charges by claiming it was the Centre’s job to prevent illegal infiltration from neighbouring countries.

Political watchers said that the back-to-back meetings this month suggested the Centre's urgency for two reasons.

The Centre is worried over the possibility of a huge influx of immigrants from Bangladesh, given its ongoing political turmoil and alleged attacks on its minorities. The BJP-led Centre also wants to hold TMC responsible for the alleged illegal infiltration in the build-up to the 2026 state polls by saying that the TMC-led government did not provide land to complete fencing.