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As West Bengal edged closer to the assembly polls due next year, 2025 unfolded as a year in which the mechanics of voting, border anxieties and sharpening communal lines eclipsed governance, turning the SIR of electoral rolls and cross-border unrest into the state's defining political battlegrounds. If the Lok Sabha elections verdict of 2024 fixed the poll arithmetic, the politics of 2025 fixed the mood. A steady undercurrent through the year was the spillover from neighbouring Bangladesh. Political instability and reports of communal violence across the border, including attacks on minorities and the killing of a Hindu man, fed directly into Bengal's political discourse. At home, the detention and pushback of Bengali-speaking migrant labourers from BJP-ruled states like Odisha, Assam, Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat on suspicion of being Bangladeshis ignited a political firestorm in West Bengal. With the 2026 polls approaching, the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC went on the offensive, ...
The border guarding forces of India and Bangladesh have taken a "momentous" decision to initiate joint civil works on five development projects along the 4,096 kms of shared boundary which will help the local population on both sides, a senior officer said Wednesday. At the end of their four-day biannual border talks conference that began on July 11 in Delhi, the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) also said they are working independently and jointly to "reduce" the instances of killing of Bangladeshi nationals in the boundary area. The issue of these killings, which the BSF has linked to miscreants and smugglers either attacking its personnel or indulge in other cross-border crimes, has been a major irritant between the two neighbours. The 53rd edition of the conference was led by the chiefs or directors general (DsG) of the BSF and the BGB and ended with the signing of a 'joint record of discussions' at a BSF camp located in Chhawla area of the nation
Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra on Wednesday called on Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during which he reaffirmed India's support for wider and deeper development and economic partnership with her country. Kwatra arrived here on Tuesday evening from Kathmandu, Nepal, on a two-day visit. "Foreign Secretary @AmbVMKwatra paid a courtesy call on Hon'ble Prime Minister H.E Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka. FS conveyed warm wishes of PM @narendramodi to PM H.E Sheikh Hasina and reaffirmed India's support for wider and deeper development & economic partnership with Bangladesh," the Indian High Commission tweeted. Earlier in the day, Kwatra held talks with his Bangladeshi counterpart Masud Bin Momen. "Foreign Secretary @AmbVMKwatra held Foreign Office Consultations (FOCs) with @FSMasud of Bangladesh. Both sides reviewed the entire gamut of bilateral partnership including political, security, trade, investment, defence, connectivity, water, power and sub-regional cooperation," the Indian ..