Patna, Feb 25: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday chaired a meeting of the Land Ports Authority of India, a statutory body functioning under the ministry responsible for creating, upgrading, maintaining and managing border infrastructure.
The meeting took place in Kishanganj district of Bihar, where Shah arrived on the first leg of his three-day tour of the Seemanchal region, falling in the state’s north-east, bordering Nepal and West Bengal.
He is also likely to hold a meeting with officials of the departments responsible for guarding the porous border with Nepal.
“The Union Home Minister is likely to brief officials on measures needed for putting a check on smuggling of drugs and circulation of counterfeit currency along the Indo-Nepal border,” Bihar DGP Vinay Kumar had said on Tuesday.
This is the first Bihar visit of Shah, also widely regarded as the BJP’s principal strategist, who was last seen in the state capital in November, at the swearing-in ceremony of the new Nitish Kumar cabinet after the NDA’s landslide victory in assembly polls.
State minister and former Bihar BJP chief Dilip Jaiswal, who hails from Kishanganj, wrote on X: “It is a matter of pride for us that Amit Shah, the Chanakya of Indian politics, has visited our land”.
Shah is scheduled to visit the adjoining Araria district on Friday where he will inspect the Indo-Nepal border, interact with officials of Sashastra Seema Bal, and also inaugurate a newly constructed “SSB Bhawan”.
He will wind up his Bihar tour on Friday with a visit to Purnea.
“Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s tour of Seemanchal is a decisive step in the direction of strengthening national security. It is a strategically important region, by virtue of its proximity to Nepal and Bangladesh and presents challenges with regard to maintaining an intelligence network and demographic balance,” state BJP spokesman Prem Ranjan Patel said in a statement.
