Kamal Guha: Under fire

Siliguri, Jan. 30: A top Border Security Force (BSF) offi- cer today alleged that minis-ter Kamal Guha had been piling pressure for the release of around 150 Bangladeshi infiltrators on the ground that they were “bona fide residents” of Bengal.

Deputy inspector-general S.S. Sandhu, asked what the force was doing to check infiltration, turned the gun on politicians, saying they had made it much more difficult for the organisation to curb the problem with their regular interference.

Citing an incident in Cooch Behar last year, Sandhu said the BSF came under a lot of pressure from Guha, the agriculture minister, who demanded that the 150 Bangladeshis arrested for infiltrating be released. “All of them were carrying false documents, but Kamal Guha insisted that they were genuine Indians,” Sandhu said at a news conference, flanked by his boss S.R. Tewari, inspector-general, North Bengal Frontier.

The minister, the DIG claimed, said those arrested were Indians as they had valid ration cards. “We were sure that the ration cards were fake,” Sandhu said.

Guha, the Forward Bloc MLA from Dinhata in Cooch Behar, scoffed at the allegations and instead accused the BSF of making false arrests.

“Only about 10 per cent of the people arrested by the BSF are illegal migrants, the rest are genuine Indians. I took up the matter with (chief minister) Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and told him that I had personally made inquires about their bona fides. The chief minister subsequently instructed his officials to make arrangements for their release,” the minister said over phone from Cooch Behar.

Guha also accused the BSF of bearing a grudge ag- ainst him for standing up against the “repression” carried out by its jawans in the border areas.

Sandhu’s revelation comes at a time when the ruling Left Front, of which Guha’s Bloc is an ally, has been waging a battle with the Election Commission, which has asked the district administration to weed out bogus voters who have obtained polling rights as they have been given fake ration cards.

Guha’s defence notwithstanding, the BSF revelation could give the Opposition another stick to beat the government with. Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress has alleged that in many districts, primarily West Midnapore and Birbhum, the population is less than the number of cards and the CPM maintains a bank of bogus voters by getting fake ration cards issued.

“This is a very serious allegation. We will take up the matter and find out how many infiltrators the Forward Bloc has got released,” said a senior Trinamul leader in Siliguri.