Bogey of Infiltration

The Bharatiya Janata Party is back to exploiting the cross-border infiltration issue in West Bengal in a big way. The state is set to go to polls within the next six months. It now accuses state’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee of ‘’dangerously altering the demography’’ in order to win elections. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the chief poll strategist of the party, didn’t mince words while declaring on Tuesday that ‘infiltration’ will be the chief poll plank for the BJP in West Bengal, a state which has resolutely stood against handing the levers of power to the Hindutva party.

His words hardly leave any scope for explaining that the alleged infiltrators are Bangladeshi Muslims who, in the BJP’s imagination, provide the major votebank for the Trinamool Congress to repeatedly romp home in the bordering state. The party’s use of Bangladeshi infiltration speaks of the BJP’s mental bankruptcy as the blame should lie at the doors of the Central dispensation which has been ruling the nation since 2014. The Border Security Force (BSF), a paramilitary force under the Central government is responsible for securing the borders and apprehending the infiltrators.

If what Mr. Shah alleges has some substance, it is the Central dispensation that should be held responsible for the failure in securing the nation’s frontiers. Moreover, the BSF comes under the Union Home Ministry and none but Mr. Shah has been holding the reins of the ministry since May 2014. Ultimately, it is he who should be explaining and owning the failure. There cannot be any doubt that some infiltration may be happening as India shares the largest proportion of its international border with Bangladesh and its porosity with numerous rivers and forests straddling it cannot be disputed.

Yet the party’s raising the bogey of mass infiltration inasmuch as being capable of altering the demography of the state flies in the face of facts. Even according to the Ministry’s own data provided in response to various parliamentary queries shows that approximately 20,806 infiltrators were arrested across India’s borders (mostly the India-Bangladesh border) between 2014 and 2024 with a significant number specific to the West Bengal border. If one could presume only a tenth of infiltrators are being detected and arrested, the level of overall infiltrations shouldn’t rise above two lakh. And that should be overall figure across all international borders, not merely across West Bengal.

Even the latest Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state doesn’t support his allegation. The draft rolls released on December 16, 2025 after conclusion of the SIR has reported a little over 58 lakh deletions. Of these, 24.28 lakh electors were reported as deceased. Another 32 lakh electors were shown as ‘’shifted’’ or ‘’absent’’ while 1.38 lakh voters were found to have duplicate enrolments in multiple places. This being the situation as of now, Mr. Shah’s allegations should be merely seen as a bogey rather than factual. And the blame for even the miniscule level being detected should be attributed to the Centre rather than the State government.