Patna, February 25 Union Home Minister Amit Shah chaired a meeting of the Land Ports Authority of India on Wednesday, a statutory body functioning under the ministry responsible for creating, upgrading, maintaining, and managing border infrastructure.
The meeting took place in the Kishanganj district of Bihar, where Shah arrived as part of the first leg of his three-day tour of the Seemanchal region, located in the state's north-east and bordering Nepal and West Bengal.
He is also likely to meet with officials of the departments responsible for guarding the porous border with Nepal.
"Union Home Minister Amit Shah is likely to brief officials on the measures needed to curb the smuggling of drugs and the circulation of counterfeit currency along the Indo-Nepal border," Bihar DGP Vinay Kumar had said on Tuesday.
This is the first visit to Bihar by Shah, who is also widely regarded as the principal strategist of the BJP, who was last seen in the state capital in November, at the swearing-in ceremony of the new Nitish Kumar cabinet following the NDA's landslide victory in assembly elections.
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 adjacent Araria district on Friday, where he will inspect the Indo-Nepal border, interact with officials of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), and also inaugurate a newly constructed "SSB Bhawan".
He will conclude his Bihar tour on Friday with a visit to Purnea.
"Union Home Minister Amit Shah's tour of Seemanchal is a decisive step towards strengthening national security. It is a strategically important region, due to 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.