BOTH Houses of Indian parliament in a historic feat have passed the landmark constitution Amendment Bill to ratify the long-pending Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) with Bangladesh. The Rajya Sabha passed the bills on Wednesday unanimously and the Lok Sabha – the lower House of Parliament passed it yesterday to allow the implementation of the 1974 Indo-Bangla deal and its protocol signed in 2011. The passage of the bill into law has removed all bottlenecks to implement the deal. It would now open the way for exchange of enclaves and adversely possessed land from both sides on the border. We welcome the positive move of the Indian parliament to end the misunderstanding arising out of the long standing border disputes and to end the suffering of the enclave people who came out celebrating the news over the past few days on both sides of the border. These virtually stateless people would now get their national identity and access to economic and social support to aspire a good living and we hope they would get their life settled better now under direct support of the respective governments.
Reports said under the deal India would secede 111 enclaves inside Bangladesh, mostly located in Kurigram, Nilphamari, Lalmonirhat and Panchagar districts. The people in those enclaves would decide if they would stay here or leave for India. Similarly Bangladesh would hand over 51 enclaves to India, which are located in Cooch Behar and West Bengal. Both sides will also exchange adversely possessed land and carry out demarcation of over 6 km unmarked border to end sporadic border disputes.
The government of Narendra Modi in Delhi deserves praise for tabulating the bill. This is no doubt a defining moment, we must say in our relations with India and we join our voice with the voice of Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj who hailed the event saying “this is a historic situation” and India is going to implement it after 41 years of the signing of the agreement. For us in Bangladesh we were waiting for the moment ever since our Jatiya Sangsad had ratified the Indira-Mujib land boundary agreement four decades ago.
We know the former Congress led UPA government led by Dr Manmohan Singh had taken the way forward to implement the deal but the then major opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and some state governments opposed the move. Now BJP is in power and the West Bengal and Assam governments have also lent their support to the bill creating the exceptional moment that led to its ratification.
As we see the Indian parliament has very swiftly and unanimously passed the bill in both Houses showing the sincere support of its members to remove the legal bottleneck in the way of the border settlement agreement. It is now a settled issue, but still much remains to be done when implementing the agreement.
It will be welcome to see fresh initiatives in respect of unsettled problems between the two countries. Moreover credible steps are to be followed for implementation of the border issue so settled long ago. It is praiseworthy that the central govt of Narendra Modi finally made it possible to clear the legal hurdle.
