The Pulse | Diplomacy | South Asia

BJP Victory in West Bengal Intensifies ‘Push-in’ Anxieties in Bangladesh

Over 80 percent of India’s border with Bangladesh now falls under the direct rule of the BJP, which thrives on anti-migrant rhetoric.

A rally organized by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarti Parishad, the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in Bihar, in 2008, calling for the eviction of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants from India’s eastern states bordering Bangladesh.

The victory of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recent elections to the West Bengal state assembly has been received with mixed feelings in neighboring Bangladesh. On the one hand, it has raised hopes among some sections in Bangladesh that with the defeat of Mamata Banerjee’s government, an important “obstacle” in the way of an agreement on the sharing of the Teesta River’s waters has been removed. On the other hand, Bangladeshis are anxious that with the BJP now ruling four of the five Indian states that border Bangladesh, India could escalate the “push-back” of alleged undocumented migrants into Bangladesh.

This two-part series examines how the change of political guard in West Bengal is likely to impact India-Bangladesh relations. While Part One examined whether the two countries could sign an agreement on sharing the Teesta’s waters in the coming months, Part Two explores Bangladeshi anxieties about the likely intensification of an anti-migrant drive.

Over the past decade, leaders of India’s ruling BJP have often said that India would be able to permanently solve the problem of illegal migration from Bangladesh once the BJP formed a government in the eastern state of West Bengal, which borders Bangladesh.

On May 4, the BJP scripted a landslide victory in West Bengal and subsequently formed the government.

News of the BJP’s Bengal victory and return to power in neighboring Assam immediately triggered speculations in Bangladesh over the possibility of a fresh, even intensified drive to push alleged illegal Bangladeshi migrants into Bangladesh.

Five Indian states share borders with Bangladesh. Of them, West Bengal accounts for more than half of India’s 4,096.7 km-long border with Bangladesh. Assam and Tripura, which share borders of 263 km and 856 km, respectively, with Bangladesh, have been under BJP rule for nearly a decade. The party is also part of the ruling coalition in Meghalaya, which shares a 443-km border with Bangladesh. Only Mizoram, which shares a 318-km border with Bangladesh, does not have the BJP in power.

The Bengal victory brings over four-fifths of the India-Bangladesh border under direct BJP rule.

Since being named the BJP prime ministerial candidate in 2013, Modi put forward a new policy on migrants from Bangladesh, especially in the context of West Bengal and Assam. Hindus from Bangladesh are refugees, who deserve equal rights as all Indian citizens, he said, while Muslims are infiltrators, eating into the country’s resources. While the first must be accorded citizenship, the second should be expelled. This was formalized as the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, which grants citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from India’s Muslim-majority neighbors, i.e., Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

The process of what is called “push-back” in India and “push-in” in Bangladesh is not new. It is an informal process, bypassing the formal diplomatic procedure, which is time-consuming. India had launched a drive formally named “Operation Pushback” in 1992, which was subsequently condemned by Amnesty International.

However, there was a rapid escalation in such push-backs after February 2025, especially after U.S. President Donald Trump started deporting planeloads of undocumented migrants, including to India.

Some of these people that India pushed into Bangladesh turned out to be Indians and were subsequently brought back. This “push-back” deepened anxieties and tension in India, especially in areas near the border.

Simultaneously, the government launched the controversial Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Millions of people without documents were removed from electoral rolls because they were allegedly Bangladeshis who had entered India illegally. The assembly election in West Bengal was held without resolving disputes around 2.7 million voters who had challenged their deletions from the roll.

Earlier this year, Modi said that illegal immigration poses a serious threat to India’s security, social balance, and the........

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