Staff Reporter :
The implementation of Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) between Bangladeshi and India might be delayed for sometime due to some errors in the draft of the Constitution Amendment Bill of India.
According to the reports of Indian media, the Constitution Amendment Bill to ratify the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) was passed by the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Indian parliament, on May 6 with some errors in its draft.
So, the bill was sent beck to the Rajya Sabha to make the corrections. The Constitution Amendment Bill was also passed by Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian parliament, on May 7. But, the legislators marked some errors in the draft during the discussion on the bill in Lok Sabha.
The errors in the draft were instantly corrected in the Lok Sabha before its passage. As the bill was cleared by the Rajya Sabha the previous day with the errors, it was sent to the upper house again for making necessary corrections.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is expected to place the bill before Rajya Sabha on Monday.
In the draft of the bill, the amendment was mentioned as the 119th amendment, 2013, but in fact it was the 100th amendment, 2015. Apart from that, the Indian legislators marked some other errors, which are required to the corrected.
After making corrections, the experts will examine the bill if it is required to get the approval from state legislatures. Then the bill would be placed before the President for his approval.
The Constitution Amendment Bill was passed in Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha unanimously to ratify the LBA, which was signed by the governments of Bangladesh and India in 1974 to exchange the 162 enclaves, solve the disputes of adversely possessed areas and un-demarcated borders between the two countries. However, Dr Imtiaz Ahmed, Professor of International Relations of the University of Dhaka, thinks it would not be a major factor for the implementation of LBA.
“These are very minor mistakes. If no question arises on the conditions of the agreement, they (the Indian government) can make the correction within a short time,” he said.
Talking to The New Nation, he said India would make the correction for its own interests. “As India is going to be a great responsible power in the international community, any delay in the implementation of LBA for some minor mistakes would demean it image,” he said.
Asked on the approval of the four state legislatures, Imtiaz Ahmed said the Indian government does not require it as the bill is passed in the national parliament, which much bigger than the state parliament. He also said the approval of the President was also a formality.
