India, Aug. 23 -- For over a decade, Union Home Minister Amit Shah's requests for land to fence India's border with Bangladesh in West Bengal went, in his own telling, unanswered. On Friday, standing at the Sashastra Seema Bal's frontier headquarters in Siliguri's Ranidanga area alongside Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, Amit Shah made clear that chapter had closed-and used the moment to lay out an expansive national security agenda for the state's northern flank.

Addressing a gathering at the SSB campus on the second day of his two-day North Bengal tour, Shah announced that the Adhikari government had handed over 1,129 acres of land required to complete the India-Bangladesh border fencing, with another 29 acres expected shortly. He said...