Kolkata, July 22 (IANS) A police station for the National Investigation Agency (NIA) will be set up in West Bengal soon. A proposal on this count was cleared at a meeting of the state cabinet chaired by Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Wednesday.
The work for setting up the police station will commence shortly, the State Municipal Affairs and Urban Development Minister Agnimitra Paul, a fashion designer‑turned‑politician, informed media persons at the end of the cabinet meeting.
The eastern regional headquarters of the central investigative agency is located in Salt Lake in the northern outskirts of Kolkata, and all operations of the agency are currently managed from there.
However, following the increase in workload for the NIA due to the rising number of cases in West Bengal, a proposal has now been adopted by the state cabinet to establish a separate NIA police station in the state.
It is learnt that construction work of the police station will commence soon following the completion of all necessary government formalities. However, the specific location of the station has not yet been disclosed, and this information will be announced shortly.
A member of the state cabinet said the NIA is investigating several cases within West Bengal, including matters dating back to the tenure of the previous Mamata Banerjee‑led Trinamool Congress government. At the same time, it is initiating fresh investigations into various other issues.
Consequently, the workload is increasing, and taking all these factors into account, the proposal to establish a new police station was approved during the cabinet meeting.
At the meeting of the state cabinet earlier in the day, several proposals were also cleared on handover of land to the Border Security Force (BSF) at different areas near the international borders with Bangladesh in the state.
The most prominent among these decisions is to allot 0.588 acres of government‑vested land, situated in Fatehbad Mouza under the Chopra Block and Police Station in North Dinajpur district in North Bengal, for the purpose of erecting a barbed‑wire fence along the India‑Bangladesh border.
At the same time, another proposal was cleared for allotting 0.42 acres of land for the 56th battalion of the BSF.
