Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh and India have launched a joint survey to record the ‘choice of nationality’ of the people in 162 enclaves in each other’s territories. At the same time, the survey would ascertain the exact number of population in the enclaves, while it is primarily estimated at 51,584.
The survey started on Monday exactly a month after the historic Land Boundary Agreement [LBA] was formalised through exchange of documents during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Dhaka visit apparently with a view to settling the 41-year-old dispute.
The children those have born after 2011 and those became residents through marital status would be included in the latest survey. If the primary survey would be completed by July 16, the total information would be disclosed to media on July 20. It is expected that the overall task would be completed by July 23.
As per the agreement signed between the two countries, the exchange of enclaves will start on July 31. And the Bangladesh and Indian governments would start procedures to rehabilitate the enclave people by November 30. Those who would be interested to change their addresses would get travel passes.
Official sources said the joint teams comprising 68 members are taking part in the survey at 111 Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh. Besides, the joint teams comprising 34 members are engaged in survey at 51 enclaves inside Indian territory. “Each team comprises five men representing both countries and they are asking the enclave residents which nationality they opt for… they will have to complete their task in next 16 days and submit the findings to the respective authorities of the two countries,” a Home Ministry official said.
According to preliminary estimation, a total of 37,369 people live in the 111 Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh while 14,215 people live in the 51 Bangladeshi enclaves inside Indian territories.
Unofficial surveys earlier found all residents of 51 Bangladeshi enclaves inside India would opt for Bangladeshi nationality while 1,057 people of 223 families in 99 of the 111 Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh territory were willing to go to the Indian mainland. A non-government organisation called the India-Bangladesh Enclaves Exchange Coordination Committee recently carried out the study.
Our Kurigram Correspondent Kh.Ekramul Haq Samrat reported: Bangladesh-India joint survey was inaugurated at Dashiar Chhara enclave at Phulbari upazila by Kurigram Deputy Commissioner (DC) Khan Md. Nurul Amin at 11:00 am on Monday.
At the same time, the survey was also simultaneously started from Bhitorkuti-Daspota enclave in Lalmonirhat district.
In Dashiar Chhara, the inaugural activities began in the center of the house of Altaf Hossain, president of Dashiar Chhara enclave. Kurigram Superintendent of Police(SP) Mohammad Tobarak Ullah, Phulbari Upazila Nirbahi Officer(UNO) Nasir Uddin Mahmud, President of enclave Exchange Coordination Committee of Bangladesh unit Moynul Haque and General Secretary Golam Mostafa were also present.
After inauguration necessary papers were supplied among the counters of 7 centers in the enclave, per unit comprising 20 members. The centers are coordination Maddapara Altaf’s house, Dolatary Ismail’s house, Khareatery of Noor Islam’s house, Mosque of Mostafa, Bottola Mosque area, Jabed’s house and Debirpad coordination office. In the joint counting the supervisors of India are – Nilodpal Chakrobarti,T-Sherpa,counter-Jogesh Chandra Barmon, Nirmal Chandra Sarkar, Kanai Lal Roy, Sumir Biswas, N, Chatterjee, Prosanto Debnath, Bijoy Kumer Chatterjee and Dinonath Chandra Barmon.
The supervisors of Phulbari Upazila are – Upazila Assistant Education Officer Rashedul Haque, Fishery Officer Mahmudul Hasan and counter-head teacher of goverment primary school Shahjada Khandoker, Afroja Khatun, Mollik Hossain, Kamruzzaman, Jaidul Haque and Morzina Khatun. The joint survey teams are collecting names and taking signatures from door to door whose names were included in the head counting survey in 2011. In addition who took bath in the enclave in 2011, their names are being included.
There are around 10,000 people living in Dashiar Chhara, the largest Indian enclave around 32km away from Kurigram district headquarters and 2km off the Indian border. Sources said joint survey will select citizenship and update head counting in 12 Indian enclaves situated in Kurigram district. Phulbari administration sources said the Indian team comprising 11 members and Bangladesh team in 9 members have begun to collect opinion among the inhabitants of Indian enclave Dashiar Chhara.
The inhabitants, who want to be their citizenship in India, will fill up a form from the survey team and will deposit to them. They have to go to Indian territory after completing the formalities from August 01, 2015 to November 30, 2015.
Meanwhile, local administration issued a notice that no land of the enclave will be sold from June 22 to August 31, 2015. If anyone wants to sale their land, they have to take permission from the Deputy Commissioner. Many people living in Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh territory are now in fear of losing ownership of the lands they have inherited from ancestors or bought without registrations in the landlocked areas.
Enclave dwellers said that very few of them had legal documents of lands as they could not cross over the border to visit the land offices concerned in the main land of India for buying or selling lands. Mozaffar Hossain, a local leader of India-Bangladesh Enclaves Exchange Coordination Committee’s Bangladesh unit, said, ‘Many of the enclave dwellers were coming to the coordination committee’s central office in Dashiar Chhara and expressing their worries about the land ownerships everyday as they were usually buy and sell land without any registration and valid documents.’
The coordination committee, a platform of the subcontinent’s ‘stateless’ people, earlier initiated a move on its own to conduct a survey incorporating information about family members and area of land in their possessions in the wake of growing concern among the people in the enclaves after the passage of a bill seeking amendment to the constitution by Indian parliament for rectification of the much-awaited Land Boundary Accord with Bangladesh.
Neither the government of India nor of Pakistan had recognized the residents of the landlocked areas as their citizens and therefore they were derived of all basic rights of a citizen for years with no end to their suffering till date, said a number of enclave dwellers, who had seen both the British and the Pakistani regimes before Bangladesh was liberated from Pakistan in 1971. ‘The issue of the enclaves has long been hanging in balance for neglect by India.
The people living in the enclaves have been deprived of citizenship and other civic facilities for 68 years,’ India-Bangladesh Enclaves Exchange Coordination Committee’s Bangladesh unit president Mohammad Moinul Haque said.
He said that the Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka Pankaj Saran for the first time visited Dashiar Chhara, the largest Indian enclave located in Kurigram, with the two countries were preparing for the land swap between them to put an end to the sufferings of over 51,000 people living in the landlocked areas without any official identity.
‘The High Commissioner has requested us to take patience and maintain peace as the two governments are now at the final stage to implement the LBA,’ the enclave leader said. Bangladesh and India will formally exchange documents of the enclave land on either side of the border and take rehabilitation programmes for the people after the ratification process is completed, said officials concerned.
A total of 51 Bangladesh enclaves – 18 of Kurigram and 33 of Lalmonirhat – are located in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal and out of 111 Indian enclaves, 12 are situated in Kurigram, 59 in Lalmonirhat, four in Nilphamari and 36 in Panchagarh of Bangladesh. Under the agreement, India will hand over 111 enclaves measuring 17,160 acres of land with a population of over 37,369 to Bangladesh and take over 51 enclaves covering an area of 7,110 acres with a population of nearly 14,090, according to officials.
According to the LBA, India will get the 7,110 acres area and Bangladesh 17,160 acres once the agreement is implemented.
On the other hand, the residents of enclaves will be able to sell their land and take with them movable assets, like money, while migrating to the country of their choice as per the land swap deal between Bangladesh and India.
But before that, they would have to apply for the citizenship of the country of their choice to the Bangladesh-India joint commission, said the officials.
