With the launch of its “detect, delete and deport” drive, the BJP-led West Bengal government on Monday opened its first holding centre for illegal foreign nationals in Malda, where nine suspected Bangladeshi citizens have been housed.
According to an official, extensive security measures have been put in place at the centre, including round-the-clock CCTV monitoring and deployment of police, civil defence personnel and civic volunteers, while provisions for the detainees’ meals and maintenance have also been arranged
The only existing one in Bengal, it has been set up at Chandan Park in English Bazar which continues to house nine individuals- including three women and six minors, who were brought there from Gazole's Pandua area on Sunday, amid heightened security arrangements, senior district police officers said.
Another police officer in Malda said the facility has been created to temporarily accommodate foreign nationals detained on charges of illegal entry or lack of valid documents.
“The holding centre has started functioning. At present, nine Bangladeshi nationals are being housed there. Necessary verification and legal procedures are being carried out. The detainees are being treated in accordance with prescribed legal norms,” the officer told PTI.
The development comes barely two days after the state Home and Hill Affairs Department's Foreigners' Branch directed all district administrations to establish "holding centres" for "apprehended foreigners" and "released foreign prisoners awaiting deportation or repatriation", giving institutional shape to one of the BJP's most politically resonant themes in Bengal.
The directive entered the machinery of governance after chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said the state would enforce a central order issued last year to trace illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and transfer them to the BSF for deportation.
At a meeting with senior BSF officers where land was handed over for fencing work along stretches of the Bangladesh border, Adhikari indicated that the state's anti-infiltration agenda had entered the implementation phase.
He had maintained that those outside the purview of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act would be treated as illegal entrants.
"Those who are outside the purview of the CAA are infiltrators and will be arrested by the state police and handed over to the BSF," Adhikari had said.
The new state order cited guidelines issued by the Union home ministry on the handling of Bangladeshi citizens and Rohingyas allegedly living in the country without valid authorisation.
Under these rules, such individuals may be kept at designated holding centres for a maximum of 30 days until officials complete checks related to their identity, nationality and documentation.
Under the proposed mechanism, the BSF would coordinate with Border Guards Bangladesh for deportation formalities, the officials said.
The holding centres now appear to be emerging as one of the first visible administrative structures under that framework.
The mechanism also appeared linked to the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, enacted by Parliament last year. The law replaced multiple earlier legislations governing immigration, registration and foreign nationals and introduced a more technology-driven structure for surveillance, detention and deportation, the officials said.
The legislation also empowered police personnel of head constable rank and above to arrest, without a warrant, individuals suspected of violating immigration requirements.
District magistrates or officers of equivalent rank would take the final call on citizenship determination.
The process also envisages the collection of biometric data, uploading records to central databases and eventual transfer of identified illegal immigrants to border security authorities for repatriation.
However, a subsequent exemption order issued by the Union government insulated certain minority communities - Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian - from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan from prosecution if they had entered India before December 31, 2024, citing religious persecution.
North Malda BJP MP Khagen Murmu welcomed the initiative and said those who were not Indian citizens and not covered under CAA should return to their own countries.
"Our country and our state need protection. Bengal had become a corridor for Rohingyas, terrorists and 'jihadi' elements," he alleged.
Reacting to the development, senior TMC leader Krishnendu Narayan Chowdhury said the government must have acted on the basis of concrete intelligence inputs.
"If the government is apprehending illegal Bangladeshi nationals, we have no problem. We support the move. But no legal Indian citizen should be harassed," he said.
In Bengal politics, infiltration has long existed as more than a border issue. For years, it remained one of the BJP's sharpest electoral themes against previous governments, particularly in border districts and refugee-dominated constituencies where questions of migration, citizenship and identity often shaped political discourse.
While most BJP-ruled states had swiftly enforced the directive, before the landslide loss in the Assembly Elections, the former TMC government had protested against the “atrocity” and refused to enforce the order, stating that this had led to police harassment of several migrant workers hailing from Bengal.
For a state where border politics often unfolded through slogans and speeches, guarded holding centres now appear to signal that the battleground may increasingly shift to government notifications and administrative structures.