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The Narendra Modi cabinet today cleared a bill to ratify the India-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement or LBA by Parliament. The bill includes enclaves to be transferred to Bangladesh in the states of Assam, West Bengal, Tripura and Meghalaya and those that are to be acquired from the neighbouring country. The bill is scheduled to be tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday with nearly the entire Opposition, including the Trinamool Congress, likely to support the bill.
The constitutional amendment bill, as it entails amending the First Schedule of the Constitution, will need to be passed by two thirds majority of at least half the total strength of the two Houses of Parliament and then by half the state legislatures. The First Schedule delineates the area of each of the states and union territories of the Union of India.
The LBA was signed in 1974 but not ratified by Parliament. A protocol for the transfer of territories was signed between the then PM Manmohan Singh and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina, and a bill introduced in December 2013 in the Rajya Sabha by the UPA government. That bill was referred to a parliamentary standing committee, which submitted its report in December 2014.
According to government sources, prominent Opposition parties, including the Congress and Trinamool Congress, are on board. The government had earlier prepared to bring the bill in the Lok Sabha but without the territories in Assam, which was opposed by the Opposition, including the Congress. This led to the bill, this time with the enclaves in Assam, be sent to the cabinet.
Both Assam and Bengal are scheduled for assembly polls in the second quarter of 2016, and some within the BJP thought it could turn out to be an emotive issue. The BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders met with Assam leadership on Monday. Home Minister Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, along with RSS joint general secretary Krishna Gopal, attended the meeting at the residence of BJP chief Amit Shah. Sources indicate the bill could help deal with the problem of immigration into Assam from Bangladesh.
The LBA entails India transferring 111 enclaves with a total area of 6,944 hectares to Bangladesh, while Bangladesh would transfer 51 enclaves with an area of 2877 hectares to India. According to a Ministry of External Affairs factsheet, "while on paper, the exchange of enclaves between India and Bangladesh may seem like a loss of Indian land to Bangladesh, the actual scenario is quite different as the enclaves are located deep inside the territory of both countries and there has been no physical access to them from either country." It states that "in reality, the exchange of enclaves denotes only a notional exchange of land".
Apart from the enclaves, the two sides will also recognise each others' legal right on certain adverse possessions of land. India will receive 1,123 hectares of land and will transfer 917 hectares of land to Bangladesh. The area to be transferred is already in the possession of Bangladesh/India and the handing over of the area is merely a procedural acceptance of the de-facto situation on the ground.
The LBA is an attempt to settle the unresolved boundary that the two countries inherited after the partition in 1947.
