Union Home Minister Amit Shah and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday held a brief one-on-one meeting here at state secretariat Nabanna on the sidelines of the Eastern Zonal Council meeting chaired by Shah.
During the meeting that lasted around 20 minutes, issues such as the pending dues from the Centre to West Bengal government on account of different centrally-sponsored schemes and complications related to availability of land for several border outposts (BOPs) for Border Security Force (BSF) in the state were reportedly discussed.
West Bengal government sources said that during the meeting, the Chief Minister handed over to the Union Home Minister a detailed written submission of the dues pending to the state government under various centrally sponsored schemes and she also requested Amit Shah to ensure that such dues are cleared as quickly as possible so that the state government could go ahead with the different development projects.
Meanwhile, Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari said that in the one-on-one meeting, the Union Home Minister raised the issue of BSF facing problems in getting lands for setting up BOPs.
“Before the Union home minister left the city, I had a chance to speak to him for a couple of minutes. I enquired about the proceedings of his meeting with the chief minister. He said that the state government is reluctant to provide land for setting up 72 new BOPs of BSF. He requested the chief minister to ensure that this problem is solved and also discussed ways on how the coordination between BSF and state police can be improved to check cross- border criminal activities,” he said.
