Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subhendu Adhikari on Monday accused the West Bengal government of deliberately hampering efforts to acquire land for construction of BSF posts and other critical infrastructure on the Bangladesh border. .

Shubhendu said that the non-cooperation of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government is endangering national security by hindering important measures to stop cross-border infiltration and crime. He accused the Mamata government of giving priority to vote-bank politics by keeping the security of both the state and the nation at stake.

However, TMC rejected Shubhendu's allegations as baseless. The party accused the BJP leader of politicizing the issue. Shubhendu's comments come amid growing concerns over infiltration and cross-border crime in West Bengal, especially along the 2,216-km India-Bangladesh border.

The BJP leader stressed that the TMC government's refusal to allot land for the Border Security Force (BSF) is leading to increase in infiltration and terrorist activities from Bangladesh.

He said in Kolkata that the West Bengal government is obstructing the land acquisition process to build border outposts (BOPs) and fencing to protect the border. The central government is ready to bear all the expenses, but the state government is deliberately not providing the land.

Shubhendu alleged that TMC is doing this with the intention of pleasing a particular community to maintain its vote bank. He also expressed concern over the delay in border fencing work and said that the 569.254 km long international border in the state is still unsafe, a large part of which is highly vulnerable to infiltration and smuggling.

The BJP leader said, the state government has not even approved the land acquisition cases approved by the Centre. As a result BSF has been unable to create necessary infrastructure including posts and fencing at more than 17 important locations. He said that due to the delay there has been an unbridled increase in illegal activities.

Shubhendu also accused the state police of not cooperating with the BSF in curbing cross-border crimes, especially human trafficking, animal smuggling and smuggling of drugs like Phensedyl and Yaba tablets. The state police has failed to take necessary action against cross-border criminals, he claimed. Many of these criminal elements are working at the instigation of the ruling party.

Responding to the allegations, TMC leader Kunal Ghosh termed them baseless. He said that these allegations against the state government are baseless. The state government has provided all possible help to BSF and other central agencies. Shubhendu is trying to blame the state government to divert attention from the failures of the central government.