How India gave 111 enclaves to Bangladesh and got 51 under 2015 land pact

A political storm has erupted between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress over previous pacts signed by their respective governments. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi lambasted the Grand Old Party for “ceding” Katchatheevu island to Sri Lanka in the 1970s, the Congress has hit back by raking up the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) with Bangladesh.

Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said the 2015 pact signed under the BJP-led NDA government “shrunk” India’s land area by “10,051 acres”.

“In 2015, the Modi Government signed the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh that gave up 17,161 acres of Indian territory while receiving only 7,110 acres. Effectively, India’s land area shrunk by 10,051 acres. Rather than make juvenile allegations on the Prime Minister, the Congress Party supported the Bill in both Houses of the Parliament.”

Aap chronology samajhiye:

1. The President of BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit files a RTI query to create a diversionary issue in Tamil Nadu. While lakhs of RTI queries on pressing public issues are ignored or rejected, this one gets VVIP treatment and gets answered rapidly

2. The… https://t.co/i1UXgNuL1d

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) March 31, 2024

What was the 2015 land pact between India and Bangladesh? Let’s take a closer look.

History of the border issue

India and Bangladesh share about a 4,000-km land boundary. The border line was drawn by Sir Radcliffe between India and the then East Pakistan at the time of the 1947 Partition.
However, disputes erupted as the border led to the creation of enclaves that belonged to India but were surrounded by Bangladesh and vice versa.

In 1974, Indian PM Indira Gandhi signed a land boundary pact with her Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Mujibur Rehman to demarcate the border between the two countries and swap over 160 enclaves between both nations, as per a LiveMint report.

While Bangladesh ratified the agreement, India did not as it meant seceding territory. Thus, the issues of enclaves, undemarcated land border of about 6.1 km in three sectors: Daikhata-56 (West Bengal), Muhuri River-Belonia (Tripura) and Lathitila-Dumabari (Assam), and adverse possessions remained unresolved, reported Indian Express.

Adverse possession refers to the territory within the control of one country but legally part of another nation.

The matter came up again in 2011 when the then PM Manmohan Singh and Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina signed a protocol to maintain the status quo regarding the adverse possessions of land. According to the think tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF) report, India was to receive 2,777.038 acres of land from Bangladesh and transfer 2,267.682 acres of land to the neighbour.

However, the protocol could not be implemented due to political opposition to the deal in India.

How 2015’s ‘historic’ LBA came to be

When PM Modi swept to power at the Centre in 2014, his government made ‘neighbourhood first’ the main plank of his foreign policy, reported LiveMint.

Under this, the BJP government aimed to strengthen ties with its other neighbouring countries, including Bangladesh.

PM Modi met Bangladesh’s PM Hasina twice – first on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York and then at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in Kathmandu.

“During the first meeting, the prime minister (Modi) was reticent while talking about the land boundary issue. During the second conversation, he was less reticent,” a person familiar with the matter told LiveMint.

PM Modi then went on to reach out to domestic political parties from Indian states close to Bangladesh that objected to the land agreement.

After convincing Assam’s BJP unit and Congress, the saffron party then brought the Trinamool Congress on board.

West Bengal was to be the most affected state as almost all the Bangladeshi enclaves in India were in the eastern state. Assam had a 2.86-km stretch in the Lathitilla-Dumabari sector in Karimganj district, reported LiveMint. 

What does the LBA entail?

In June 2015, India and Bangladesh signed the “historic” land pact in the presence of PM Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart, Hasina, in Dhaka.

The Land Boundary Agreement included the swap of 162 enclaves, with 111 enclaves (17,160 acres) being transferred to Bangladesh and 51 enclaves (7,110 acres) to India.

The pact gave the enclave dwellers a choice to live in India or Bangladesh. The exchange of enclaves began on 31 July 2015.

About 14,854 residents living in 51 Bangladesh enclaves located in Indian territory were granted Indian citizenship, while another 922 persons from Indian enclaves in Bangladesh entered Coochbehar district in 2015, reported The Hindu.

These people who came from Bangladesh were settled in three settlement camps at Dinhata, Haldibari and Mekliganj in West Bengal.

Over 36,000 enclave residents opted for Bangladeshi nationality.

The land agreement ended the decades-long stateless limbo of about 50,000 people who had been residing in the enclaves, or islands of land, since 1947 without getting the benefits of basic needs like education, healthcare, and other services from their respective national governments.

The Modi government also sanctioned Rs 1005.99 crore rehabilitation package for the enclave dwellers who came to India from Bangladesh.

Speaking at the time, PM Modi had hailed the land boundary pact. “We’ve resolved a question that has lingered since independence. Our two nations have a settled boundary. It will make our borders more secure and people’s lives more stable," he had said.

Bangladesh’s Hasina had termed PM Modi’s first visit to her country since winning the 2014 Lok Sabha elections a “historic moment”. She had said she was “extremely happy” that with the land pact, “a 68-year-old humanitarian issue comes to a peaceful end", reported Al Jazeera.

With inputs from agencies