West Bengal Diary: How Mamata put one past the home ministry

When Mamata Banerjee declared on 26 July that her state would give refuge to any person seeking asylum after Bangladesh fell into a spiral of violent protest against the Sheikh Hasina administration and she fled the country, the BJP attacked the West Bengal chief minister for playing vote bank politics.

Mamata had also invoked the UN Convention on Refugees, which spells out a neighbouring state’s obligation to give shelter, but that part of her statement was conveniently kept out. No prizes for guessing why. Instead, the MEA (ministry of external affairs) asked her to lay off, reminding her that foreign relations were a preserve of the Centre.

Since then, Mamata has made no mention in a public forum of the Bangladesh crisis or the intense build-up on the other side of the international border. Tactically, this is the smartest move she could make, for it’s now up to the Modi government to handle the crisis, and deal with the likely political blowback.

It’s also consistent with her stand over the years that policing infiltration is the job of the Border Security Force, which reports to the Union ministry of home affairs. After it won 18 of 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019, only four less than the TMC’s 22, the BJP had started believing that West Bengal was in its bag.

It sent in the storm troopers—ED (Enforcement Directorate), CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) and even the NIA (National Investigation Agency)—to investigate alleged corruption networks of cattle smuggling, illegal coal mining and, more recently, forced conversion of agricultural land (in places like Sandeshkhali) into fish farms by local TMC toughs. For good measure, this narrative of criminalisation of politics was given a communal colour as well.

NIA teams unearthed weapons hoards in Sandeshkhali, lending credence, on the face of it, to theories that Mamata and her party were sheltering elements that posed a threat to ‘national security’. To bolster the theory that in the borderlands of West Bengal, Muslims were in cahoots with networks in Bangladesh that wanted to destabilise India, the BJP also made capital of a series of horrific incidents of flogging and violence in Uttar Dinajpur and South 24 Parganas.

To suit their narrative, the names of perpetrators (Tajmul alias JCB, Jamaluddin Sardar and suchlike) were inevitably Muslims. It didn’t help the TMC cause that its own legislator Hamidul Rahman was heard saying that flaying and flogging were compliant with Islamic law. Fully aware of the damage this was doing her party and her own image, Mamata reacted fast, and sacked the legislator. Her message was emphatic: the party had zero tolerance for all this.

After Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh to shelter in India and the Modi regime had to take responsibility for sealing and securing the border, beefing up surveillance and monitoring the movement of people to and from Bangladesh, the story has changed.

Taking advantage of the international crisis on the eastern border adjoining her state, Mamata has lobbed this live political grenade right back at the Centre. It’s now for Amit Shah and his minions to ensure the safety of the border and take the blame for infiltration or worse.

In doing this, Mamata has also sought to shrug off charges that the local police and administration winked at a steady flow of illegal migrants on her watch. As the crisis unfolds in Bangladesh, the pressure on the border is likely to intensify as more people try to flee the country into the Indian border states of West Bengal, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Assam and Tripura.

Whether it’s a trickle or a flood of people seeking safety in India, the job of policing the borders has now become the sole responsibility of the Modi government. Unlike in the past, the Modi regime will not be able to put the blame on the Mamata Banerjee government anymore for encouraging illegal infiltration.

It was easy and convenient to blame opposition parties that ruled West Bengal, namely the CPI(M)- led Left Front and now the Trinamool Congress, for illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and the alleged demographic transformation of Indian border states like Assam and West Bengal, which gave the BJP grounds for terrible laws like the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

With state elections due in 2026, the Bangladesh crisis has become a domestic political issue in unexpected ways. The question of who polices the borders—and all the ensuing border blame game—should stop for now. It’s on the BSF and their minders in the Union home ministry. Mamata Banerjee has not only turned the tables on the BJP, she has also disarmed critics who have been accusing her of Muslim appeasement, even if they are not the so-called ‘registered’ BJP voters, listed by the panna pramukhs in every municipal ward and village across India.

On a different note, beleaguered as she might be, Mamata Banerjee is quick to take advantage of every opportunity and adroit at neutralising the negative impact of any incident. Her response to the horrific rape and murder of a postgraduate woman doctor at the staterun R.G. Kar Hospital & Medical College is a lesson in political management.

Acutely conscious of the public perception that women are no longer really safe in a West Bengal overtaken by lawless goons connected with her party, Mamata Banerjee has led a calibrated escalation of pressure on the city police to find and bring the culprit/ culprits to trial.

Her latest salvo is a threat, delivered as an ultimatum with a deadline: if the police fail to find the perpetrator/s, she will call in the CBI. For years, Mamata Banerjee has said the CBI is being misused by its controllers, namely the prime minister and his flunkeys for partisan purposes.

By invoking the CBI as an effective agency for the investigation of crime, Mamata Banerjee has challenged the BJP, proving she has nothing to fear from an ‘agency’ if it does its job and just that.