Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday alleged that the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal was abetting undocumented migration from Bangladesh for electoral benefits, and said that the Bharatiya Janata Party will drive out all “infiltrators” from the country.
“Can there be a state government that turns the region into a haven for infiltrators?” Shah asked at a press conference held in Kolkata as part of his three-day visit to West Bengal. “This is a grave danger to national security. The West Bengal chief minister [Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee] must give answers on this during the election.”
Assembly elections in West Bengal are expected to be held in early 2026.
Shah claimed that undocumented immigration from Bangladesh had stopped in BJP-ruled states such as Assam and Tripura. “Why does infiltration take place only in West Bengal?” he asked. “This is because under your [TMC’s] watch, infiltration is encouraged so as to bring about demographic change.”
The home minister said that the problem of undocumented migration was not limited to West Bengal but was a matter of national security.
Shah added that while the Trinamool Congress had been alleging that the Border Security Force was not able to prevent infiltration into the country, it was the West Bengal government that had failed to allocate land for border fencing.
Banerjee, however, denied the BJP leader’s accusations, asserting that the West Bengal government allotted land for fencing in the border towns of Petrapole and Andal, ANI reported.
“Today they are saying that Mamata Banerjee didn’t give land,” ANI quoted the TMC as saying. “If I hadn’t given the land, what would have happened? Who gave the land in Petrapole? Who gave the land in Andal?”
Banerjee also questioned Shah’s claim that undocumented immigration from Bangladesh was only taking place in West Bengal. “They say that immigrants only come from Bengal,” she said, according to ANI. “If that’s the case, then did you carry out the attack in Pahalgam? Who was behind the incident in Delhi?”
In the 2021 Assembly election, the Trinamool Congress won 215 of the state’s 292 seats. The BJP won 77 seats, while the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) could not win any seat.
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