By March 31, transfer land for fencing of border: Calcutta HC to Bengal

KOLKATA: Calcutta high court has directed Bengal govt to hand over to BSF by March 31 land parcels earmarked and paid for by the Union govt across nine border districts for a project to secure the porous India-Bangladesh boundary with barbed-wire fencing.

The order came on a PIL filed by a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Subrata Saha (retd), flagging what he termed a "grave threat" to national security from unfenced stretches of the international border in Bengal.


At the previous hearing, the division bench of Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Partha Sarathi Sen had asked the principal secretary of the state land acquisition department to file an affidavit on the pending land transfer.

Despite repeated assurances and large budgetary allocations by the ministry of home affairs, whose border management division and the BSF are responsible for border security, large portions of the 2,216.7-km border in West Bengal remain without fencing due to delayed land acquisition by the state govt," the petition states.

The PIL by former Deputy Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Subrata Saha (retd), executive chairperson of the new Manekshaw Centre for National Security Studies and Research that operates across IITs, cites official Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha data showing infiltration by thousands of illegal immigrants and rampant narcotics, cattle, gold and fake-currency trafficking between 2016 and 2025.

For land acquisition proposals that are still to receive the Mamata Banerjee cabinet's approval, the court will decide whether emergency acquisition of border land is possible under law in view of national security. The bench directed all parties to submit affidavits and scheduled the next hearing for April 2.

Bengal has a history of land acquisition troubles, with the aborted Tata Nano project in Singur that framed Mamata's campaign to oust the Left Front being a prime example alongside the violent 2007 anti-SEZ unrest in Nandigram.

Metro expansion projects in Kolkata have also run into land hurdles since Trinamool Congress assumed office.