The much-awaited joint headcounts in enclaves along the Bangladesh-India border is set to begin on July 14 aimed at exchanging land-locked areas between the two neighbours, officials said.
The home minister, Sahara Khatun, on Tuesday directed the local administrations concerned to take appropriate measures to smoothly conduct the headcounts in the enclaves — 111 in the Bangladesh territory belonging to India and 51 in the Indian territory belonging to Bangladesh.
She asked the administrations to take precautions so that nothing untoward could take place centring on the first-ever census in the enclaves, a senior home ministry official said.
She gave the directives at a coordination meeting on matters relating to enclaves, adversely possessed lands and undemarcated land boundary, with local administrators that included Rangpur divisional commissioner and all the deputy commissioners of four districts — Lalmonirhat, Nilphamari, Kurigram and Panchagarh.
Neither India nor Bangladesh has any clear information on their citizens living in the land-locked areas under their respective jurisdiction.
The home secretary, Abdus Sobhan Sikder, told New Age that the joint headcount in the enclaves was scheduled to take place in July 14–16.
The divisional commissioner of Rangpur, Jasim Uddin Ahmed, has been asked to coordinate the headcounts from the Bangladesh side.
Enclave inhabitants are confined to small pieces of land on which neither India nor Bangladesh has any administrative control as the areas of one country are separated by the land of the other.
The headcounts will be conducted under the supervision of a joint boundary working group set up by the two neighbours as part of an initiative to resolve the decade-old issues relating to the adversely possessed land, enclaves and 6.5 kilometres of undemarcated land boundary with India, the officials said.
The home ministry early this week sought a fund of Tk 26 crore from the finance ministry for conducting the headcounts.
The home ministry's joint secretary (political) Kamal Uddin Ahmed, who is leading the joint boundary working group from the Bangladesh side, said that the headcount in the enclaves would be conducted to implement the Mujib-Indira land boundary agreement signed between the two countries in 1974.
He said that a major decision was expected on the matter during the visit of India's prime minister Manmohan Singh to Dhaka in September.
The enumerators would fill in a simple form with basic information on the enclave people such as name, father's name, age and profession so that the move does not panic them, an official concerned said.
A joint survey is also being conducted in the adversely possessed land along the border to pave the way for resolution of all outstanding border problems during Manmohan Singh's official visit.
Both the governments have decided in principle to sign a deal on the exchange of the enclaves, according to officials.
Most people in Indian enclaves surrounded by the Bangladesh territory identify themselves as Bangladesh citizens and many of them have already managed to get national identity cards taking the advantage of lax local administration.
'Now we are neither under India nor under Bangladesh. We want implementation of the Mujib-Indira land boundary treaty and the Indian enclaves should be part of Bangladesh,' said Md Ramzan Ali, 66, who is a member on the India-Bangladesh Enclaves Exchange Coordination Committee.
A number of enclave residents have told New Age that they have constructed houses inside Bangladesh just to live as human beings as they cannot enter the Indian mainland.
Although these people, mostly farmers, are denied all kinds of government facilities, many of them enjoy a kind of 'lawlessness.' They cultivate land free of taxes and can sell the without any authentic records, according to the enclave residents.
They said that the people of Bangladeshi enclaves surrounded by India could not move to the mainland India as freely as their counterparts here could do.
There are 111 Indian enclaves in Lalmonirhat, Kurigram and Nilphamari, whereas 51 Bangladeshi enclaves are in Cooch Behar, the home affairs ministry's records show. Fifty-one Indian enclaves are in Lalmonirhat alone.
Source : New Age
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