Hand over acquired border land to BSF, HC tells Bengal
Times of India | 31 January 2026
Kolkata: Calcutta High Court has directed the Bengal govt to hand over to Border Security Force by March 31 land acquired by the Union govt across nine districts for a project to secure the India-Bangladesh boundary with barbed-wire fencing. The Centre has already paid for the land parcels but these have not been transferred yet.
The order came on a PIL filed by a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen (retd) Subrata Saha, flagging what he termed a "grave threat" to national security from unfenced stretches of the international border in Bengal.
A division bench of Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Partha Sarathi Sen, during a previous hearing, had directed the principal secretary of the state land acquisition department to file an affidavit on the matter.
"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 Saha, 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 state 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.