A welcome agreement

A welcome agreement

FPJ BureauUpdated: Saturday, June 01, 2019, 01:57 AM IST
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Yet another anomaly of the Partition is set to be corrected. The proposed amendment of the Constitution to correct the incongruities of the border between India and Bangladesh will go a long way, above all, in making tens of thousands of stateless citizens regular citizens of one or the other country. If that is a positive gain set to flow directly from the Land Boundary Agreement, there are few other tangible and intangible ones as well. Once the LBA is ratified by Parliament and the States, a major irritant between Dhaka and New Delhi will be out of the way, and help further strengthen ties between the two neighbors’. Besides, India can then think of gaining transit facilities through Bangladesh to access North-East. Right now the only road link is through the Chicken’s neck near Siliguri and entails a much longer journey than would be required should it get Bangladesh to allow passage for its vehicles through its territory. Akhura railway station in Bangladesh is merely ten kilometers from Agartala while Chittagong port is 200 kilometers from Tripura’s capital. It takes a bus from Agartala 40 hours to reach Kolkata but once Bangladesh allows transit rights the time can be cut to a mere four hours. Given both the strategic and development needs of the northeast, it is imperative that India follows up on the successful implementation of the LBA with an agreement on transit rights. Commerce and industry in the northeast will get a huge boost if such facilities are made available.

As for the LBA, it is just as well that the Modi Government has included territories in Assam as well to make it a comprehensive agreement. The Assam unit of the BJP was opposed to ceding territory to Bangladesh fearing that it would dent the party’s nationalistic credentials. Of course, such misgivings were unfounded. The dispute has been pending since Partition. An agreement in 1974 had clinched the matter, with Bangladesh even ratifying it while India somehow failed to do so. The small Indian enclaves in Bangladesh and their enclaves in our territory were the result of a messy border drawn up by the Radcliffe Commission back in 1947. Inhabitants of these enclaves do not enjoy full legal rights as citizens of either country. Fortunately, when India and Bangladesh swap territory, the inhabitants of these enclaves would not like to move out and shift allegiance to the other country. They are happy living where they are. The formal exchange of territory between the two countries under the LBA would merely validate in law the adverse ownership of these enclaves with the respective country and thus allow respective country to provide basic services there. Thus, India would legally come to own up nearly 3,000 acres of land already in its adverse possession, while, likewise, it would transfer about 2,300 acres to Bangladesh. Not a bad agreement, especially when it confers on the stateless people full citizenship rights. Maybe after the LBA, the Modi Government would try and get West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee to drop her opposition to the agreement on the sharing of the waters of the Teesta river. She had embarrassed then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by dropping out of his entourage to Dacca at the last minute in September 2011 and thus scuppered the Teesta agreement. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been quite responsive to India’s concerns, especially in ensuring that extremist groups no longer use Bangladesh territory for anti-India operations. India should reciprocate. It is for the mutual good of both the neighbours.

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