Kailash Vijayvargiya and Mukul Roy were taken away in a police vehicle in Kolkata
BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and senior leaders Mukul Roy and Joy Prakash Majumder taken into preventive custody just as they started a march in support of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in Kolkata.
"We were taking out a rally in support of the CAA, which has received overwhelming backing from across the country. But the police of Mamata Banerjee didn't let us take out a peaceful, democratic rally," Mr Vijayvargiya, who is in charge of looking after the party's Bengal strategy.
While the police said the BJP leaders tried to hold the rally without permission, the party said it had informed the police about this planned march.
"The Mamata Banerjee government has started an autocratic rule in West Bengal but the BJP cannot be intimidated," Mr Vijayvargiya told reporters before he was taken in a police vehicle at Talligunge Phari in Kolkata.
The route of the planned rally was from Tollygunge Phanri to Hazra More in south Kolkata.
Later, Mr Vijayvargiya tweeted a video from inside a police station. "We have been kept in a Kolkata Police lock-up for taking part in a pro-CAA rally. Mukul Roy is with me. This is a historic lock-up in Kolkata where freedom fighters like Shri Jatin Das and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose were kept," the BJP leader tweeted.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is a fierce critic of the CAA, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR). The opposition BJP often accuses her government of stifling any show of support to the big policy moves of the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Bengal government in December last year stopped work on the NPR. The Population Register was expected to lay the groundwork for rolling out a citizens' list in the future, though the centre has said it has no plan to run the NRC exercise across the country.