In the midnight on Saturday, people rejoiced as India and Bangladesh exchanged enclaves putting an end to the long standing border dispute and the stateless existence of thousands of people for the past 68 years.
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The partition of the Indian sub-continent at the end of British rule in 1947 left both India and Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, with hundreds of enclaves they could not administer because they were dotted along either side of their long shared border.
They became citizens of either of the countries based on their choice, as Dhaka and New Delhi exchanged the adversely possessed pieces of land at the stroke of midnight. The people are coming in India with Indian flags and candles. While finalizing the agreement, the two countries have taken into account the ground situation and the wishes of the people residing in the areas.
At a minute past midnight on Friday, 162 enclaves of land will swap hands between India and Bangladesh.
“I have already written to the Union Home Ministry that security in coordination with IB, BSF and state police should be strengthened so that anti-national elements can’t use this as an opportunity”.
The MEA said that the data from this joint exercise is now being verified by the Registrar General of India and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. The little patches of land are still called “chitmahals”, or “paper palaces”, as a reminder of the time when they and their residents served as literal IOU’s for the two pawn-pushing panjandrums. “My heart pounds with fear when I hear a mobile phone calling”, she tells AFP.
The LBA was signed in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina under which the two countries swapped the enclaves dotted around the border.
Bangladesh ratified the agreement in 1974, but India held back the process, saying it would require a constitutional amendment to implement the agreement.
Villagers in India’s eastern Cooch Behar district celebrated the historic moment by lighting torches and candles. In a world that gets more complicated every day, India and Bangladesh have finally decided, after centuries of chaos, to make their border simpler.
14,000 of them living in Bangladeshi enclaves, which have now merged with India, have become Indian citizens. “Officially I am not their father”, said Shahjahan Sheikh. She was asked to submit a detailed note on the is sue, with help from BBEECC an Indo-Bangladesh panel ad vocating enclave exchange In 2011 Census, there were just a few discrepancies and this data became the bulwark for the headcount in enclaves and proved that the exchange would be notional, paving the way for the Constitutional (119th Amendment) Bill, 2013.
Both India and Bangladesh conducted surveys this month asking enclave residents to choose a nation. The elected people’s representatives in the neighbourhood of mainland Bangladesh handed over the national standard to the elderly people at enclaves as a mark of acceptance of the enclave dwellers as Bangladeshi nationals.
Srichandi Barman and his brothers were all set to go to India until one day their parents bluntly refused to leave.
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“I’m leaving my home”, said Mr. Ali.
