Take a leaf from Assam, Shah’s swipe at Didi on infiltration

By Our Special Correspondent

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday took potshots at the Trinamool Congress government on illegal Bangladeshi immigration by highlighting the active steps taken in Assam. At a rally in Guwahati on the first anniversary of Himanta Biswa Sarma’s BJP-led government, Shah lamented that Bengal was not cooperating with the Centre in preventing “infiltration”.

The Home Minister said statistics revealed the cases of illegal migration of people from Bangladesh to Assam got reduced substantially over the past six years under the BJP. Some works are left and once they are completed, infiltration can be checked, he said. “We had promised to rid the Satras of infiltrators. In entire Assam, 10,700 bighas of land have been freed of the infiltrators by the BJP government,” he said.

“We had also promised that we will not allow the smuggling of cows to Bangladesh through Assam. I can proudly say today that all doors have been shut. The smugglers are now afraid of the Assam police from Assam to Hyderabad.”

Shah claimed violence, agitation, insurgency in Assam had been replaced by peace, development, health and education under the BJP — first by former CM Sarbananda Sonowal and then by the incumbent CM Sarma.

“After 30 years, AFSPA has been removed from 60% areas of Assam. It was removed as peace was established. Under the Congress, the AFSPA was extended 60 times.” He also took a swipe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over his poll promise of removing the AFSPA. “I want to tell Rahul baba that you had said if the Congress came to power in the 2019 polls, the AFSPA would be repealed but your promise was an act of appeasement.”

Spain's government fired the director of the country's top intelligence agency Tuesday following the alleged hacking of politicians' cell phones, including the devices of the prime minister and several supporters of the Catalonia region's secession.

The National Intelligence Center, or CNI, has been under fire for its role in spying on Catalan separatists and for taking a full year to discover that the handsets of the prime minister and leading defense and security officials were infiltrated, possibly by a foreign power.

Defense Minister Margarita Robles, who was among the reported hacking targets, announced after Cabinet meeting that Paz Esteban would be relieved as CNI director.

The fact that the supposed hacking of government phones "took a year to discover, well, it is clear there are things that we need to improve," Robles said. "We are going to try to ensure that these attacks don't happen again, even though there is no way to be completely safe."Esteban's replacement will be Esperanza Casteleiro, "a woman who has worked for almost 40 years" at the intelligence agency, Robles said. Casteleiro most recently served as secretary of defense, since 2020. In a separate case, the government recently revealed that an "external" power infected the cell phones of Robles and of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez with the Israeli company NSO's Pegasus spyware last year.

The phone of Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, the head of Spain's police and border control agencies, also was infected with the spyware at the same time as the defense minister's phone. Spain's government has refused to speculate publicly on who could have pried into the phones. The attacks on the phones of Sánchez and two of his ministers took place in May and June 2021, coinciding with a diplomatic rift between Morocco and Spain.

Sánchez's minority left-wing coalition has often had to rely on votes Parliament from Catalan separatist parties, which have threatened to withdraw their support if the government does not accept responsibility for the alleged hacking. The leader of Spain's opposition conservatives, Popular Party president Alberto Nuñez Feijóo slammed the decision to remove Esteban. He said the government had sacrificed her to the Catalan separatists.

"It is a monstrosity that Sánchez offers the head of the CNI director to the separatists, once again weakening the state to assure his survival," Popular Party President Alberto Nuñez Feijóo wrote on Twitter.