After the splendid BJP-NDA victory at the local body polls in Maharashtra, all eyes are now on West Bengal. While addressing a rally in Malda last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi minced no words in appealing to voters to break the nexus of infiltrators with those in office. He cautioned people about demographic balance being disturbed at some places in the state. In a way, PM Modi has blown the poll bugle and clearly set BJP’s campaign agenda.
Remember the situation in West Bengal when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took charge in 2011? When she entered Writers’ Building, political analysts had ascribed Banerjee’s victory to five key factors—a strong anti-incumbency sentiment after 34 years of Left Front rule; her pro-farmer campaign against the forcible takeover of land at Nandigram and Singur; criminalisation of grassroots politics; near absence of governance in Maoist-dominated areas that had alienated tribal communities; and massive corruption and mismanagement hobbling the state’s economy.
Ironically, after 15 years, Banerjee’s government is facing an equally severe anti-incumbency sentiment for almost the same reasons. Criminalisation of politics has increased manifold, thanks to the Trinamool Congress sheltering the lumpen elements who had deserted the Left Front. Besides, corruption and misgovernance have made deeper inroads into statecraft under her rule.
After the TMC came to power, the problem of illegal infiltration along the Bangladesh border became even more severe, a trend recorded by security agencies and reports. According to an official response to a parliamentary question raised in Lok Sabha in March 2016, a total of 1,009 cases of illegal infiltration had been registered in 2013 in West Bengal and 2,815 persons had been apprehended. In 2015, the latter figure went up to 3,296. As several reports have pointed out, West Bengal has emerged as the largest gateway for infiltration from Bangladesh. Sadly, the state government has always dismissed the issue as the Border Security Force’s responsibility.
Yet, when the central government expanded BSF’s operational jurisdiction to 50 km inside the international border with a view to curbing arms smuggling, counterfeit currency networks and illegal migration, the TMC government condemned the decision as an “assault on federalism”. Banerjee’s government even passed a resolution in the state assembly demanding that BSF’s powers be curtailed, despite security experts consistently stressing a strong BSF presence in the border districts as a fundamental national security requirement, particularly in light of repeated terror-related arrests and the unearthing of networks linked to Pakistan’s ISI.
Over the last 15 years, the BSF has consistently intercepted and pushed back illegal infiltrators along the Bangladesh border. According to June 2025 data, the force had pushed back more than 5,000 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in the previous three years, which is a clear evidence of the scale and persistence of the problem downplayed by the TMC. Reports have repeatedly mentioned how TMC’s “vote-bank appeasement” is carried out with the help of local leaders who facilitate documents like ration cards and voter IDs for new arrivals. Illegal immigration is not just about altering the demography—it can create corridors for narcotics, weapons and counterfeit currency, posing a direct threat to national security.
Meanwhile, communal conflicts have risen in the state. The 2016 clashes in Kaliachak near Malda and later Dhulagarh in Howrah are cases in point. The BJP’s allegation of minority appeasement for vote-bank politics has been shared by some eminent Muslims of Kolkata, too. In 2019, a group of 46 Muslim citizens of the city wrote a letter to the chief minister expressing deep concern over recent incidents in the city. Referring to the attacks on a junior doctor in Kolkata and the harassment of model Ushoshie Sengupta by members of their own community, they demanded strict action against the culprits.
The letter, shared online by Mudar Patherya, one of the signatories, stated, “We have been deeply concerned with two events … in both cases, the attackers belonged to our community. We are grieved and embarrassed.” It called on the administration to “bring the assailants to book, not just in these two instances but every single instance where Muslims are involved. They should not be allowed to get away scot-free because they happened to be Muslims (as is the growing perception)”.
Add to this the recent case of the tragic death by suicide of government official and Election Commission-appointed booth level officer Ashok Das of Jadavpur. He had recommended the deletion of hundreds of names of those who had failed to prove the authenticity of their registration for voting. Then he had allegedly been repeatedly harassed, abused and threatened by TMC goons. Scared, he decided to end his life. His suicide was in effect the gruesome murder of a government servant who was honestly discharging his duty.
But now the things are changing. After decades of relishing in the romanticism around secularism, trying to believe that ‘shonar Bangla’ can be shared between communities amicably, Bengalis are being told Hindus may soon be outnumbered by non-Hindus. They are now more conscious of the fact that others are gaining numerical and political strength, thanks to the flow of people coming from across the border. Events in the neighbourhood, especially the way Hindus are being harassed and lynched in Bangladesh, are making people restless.
They know well that till such time as vote-bank-based political parties are in power in the state, the illegal influx of foreign migrants would get overt and covert protection. As a consequence, people have started taking the BJP’s allegations about TMC’s politics of Muslim appeasement more seriously than ever before. One shouldn’t be surprised if this new awakening leads to a true poriborton or change in West Bengal.
Vinay Sahasrabuddhe | Senior BJP leader
(Views are personal)
(vinays57@gmail.com)