Hasina thanked Sonia for the LBA's passage in Indian parliament

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has thanked the opposition party leader Sonia Gandhi after India’s parliament cleared a constitutional amendment to ratify the land swap deal with Bangladesh.

While delivering a speech on the 16th anniversary of the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University in Gazipur, prime minister raised the issue on Saturday.

Last week India’s Upper House Rajya Sabha and Lower House Lok Sabha passed the long-awaited Land Boundary Agreement (LBA). The ruling BJP’s decision was also appreciated by the opposition Congress.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke the news to Hasina right after it was passed in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.

Besides thanking Modi , Hasina thanked the Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj the next day.

Hasina said that she has also called up the Congress Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and thanked her for the success of having the LBA cleared.

PM has also had a talk with the chief ministers of the Indian states surrounding the Bangladesh-Indian border.

Bangladesh shares the land border with West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.

The LBA has been hanging fire since Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. Not much progress had been made since the 1974 Indira-Mujib agreement.

The agreement was supposed to be signed during former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s 2011 Dhaka visit but West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s stern opposition stalled it.