The people of several Bangladesh enclaves inside India, now livings in different districts of Rangpur division, held a demonstration, followed by a rally in the divisional town on Sunday noon demanding their citizenship.
Later, they submitted a memorandum to the divisional commissioner for onward transmission to the prime minister to draw her attention to their plight.
Deprived of their civic and citizenship rights the people in the enclaves in adverse possession have been living sub-human life, they said.
They demanded implementation of the 1974 Mujib-Indira Treaty and said that they would never accept any new treaty without a complete solution.
Thousands of enclave people got together carrying banners of the Bangladesh chapter of India- Bangladesh Enclave Exchange Committee, and in a procession they marched down the main roads of the town demanding citizenship of Bangladesh.
Later, they laid a siege to the office of the divisional commissioner and submitted a memorandum containing their demands to the commissioner for sending it to the prime minister.
The enclave people said in the memorandum that they have been demanding citizenship of Bangladesh for long.
They reiterated the demand for the implementation of 1974 Mujib- Indira treaty.
They said that the repeated demand they made over the last 37 years for the implementation of the treaty fell on deaf ears.
They said that they would expect the implementation of the 1974 treaty now as Bangladesh and India were enjoying good relations during the tenure of the AL led coalition government.
They said that they would expect the outstanding crisis facing them due to non implementation of the treaty would be brought to an end during the visit of Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh next month.
In the memorandum, they described it as 'a record' that prime minister Sheikh Mujib had signed the treaty with his Indian counter part Indria Gandhi to exchange the enclaves in adverse possession to establish the rights of the enclave dwellers.
The said that they believed that prime minister Sheikh Hasina would be able to draw a complete map of Bangladesh by exchanging the enclaves as stipulated in the Mujib-Indira treaty.
Later, the enclave people held a rally in front of the divisional commissioner's office at Kacharibazaar.
Addressing the rally, different speakers said that the recent head count showed 17,134 Bangladeshis in its 51 enclaves, having 7,110 acres of land, inside India.
The president of the Bangladesh chapter of IBEEC, Shahadat Hossain chaired while the speakers included, Moinul Haque, Golam Mostafa and Altaf Hossain.
Source : New Age
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