India, Bangladesh rejoice historic land swap which comes after 68 years

Azizul Islam, general secretary of India-Bangladesh Enclave Exchange Coordination Committee’s Lalmonirhat unit, said the national flag of Bangladesh would be hoisted officially in all these enclaves on Saturday.

India and Bangladesh will print, sign at plenipotentiary level and exchange the strip maps of un-demarcated sectors.

Several television news channels in both the countries broadcast the celebrations live.

“For development, we need to side with the power”, says Abul Hosen another rich farmer and a leading light of Poatur Kuthi, one of the largest Bangladeshi enclaves in India.

162 enclaves of India and Bangladesh were integrated with the main land with the execution of Land Border Agreement, 1974 between the two countries at midnight on 31 July 2015. “But after this process gets over the issue of safety and security and ensuring that no unruly elements make its way to enclaves is to be looked into”, Coochbehar District Magistrate P Ulaganathan said.

“After successfully completing the exercise of ascertaining nationality options of enclave residents, the ground has been prepared for the movement of such residents who exercise the option of moving from an Indian enclave to the Indian mainland”.

After they were given the choice, close to 1,000 people opted to become Indian citizens and move to India and have now busied themselves selling their houses, trees and land, or simply leaving them behind.

Past midnight on Friday, 111 Indian enclaves measuring 17,160 acres became Bangladesh territory.

Dhaka: The exchange of enclaves between India and Bangladesh is another milestone in the ties between the two countries, a leading daily said here on Saturday. Being Bangladeshis living in enclaves within India, they could not get admitted to state-run hospitals even when they were in a critical state. The South Asian nations share a highly irregular, 2,500-mile border, where because of a quirk in their shared history small pockets of land belonging to each had been surrounded completely by the territory of the other.

Perhaps the most startling feature of the weekend visit was the welcome given to Modi by Bangladesh’s political opposition, especially the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by Khaleda Zia, whose decades long rivalry with Hasina has held back the country’s economic and political development.

“They just forgot about us”, says Zainal Abedin, who lives in another enclave, Moshaldanga. “My heart pounds with fear when I hear a mobile phone calling”, she tells AFP. “I will no longer have to use fake identities to get admission in a Bangladeshi educational institute because from now on I am a Bangladeshi national”.

The enclaves, home to some 50,000 people, were created through local peace treaties in the 18th century.

The Indian parliament passed the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) Bill on May 7 this year.The LBA was signed in May 1974 between prime minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and prime minister Indira Gandhi.

However, in the Bangladeshi enclaves in India, it is all Didi. “I had no reason to live, but witnessing this historic moment has at least assured me that my grandchildren will have a brighter future”, said Sadhana Chakraborty, 86.