Joint survey starts in enclaves

A joint survey has started to cover residents of the 162 enclaves inside India and Bangladesh.

Lalmonirhat Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 6 July 2015, 10:03 AM
Updated : 6 July 2015, 03:57 PM

The survey seeks to ascertain the population of the enclaves and the citizenship of the residents.

The survey started exactly a month after the Land Boundary Agreement was formalised through exchange of documents during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Dhaka visit.

It started from Bhitorkuti-Daspota enclave in Lalmonirhat district Monday morning.

Over 60 officials are conducting the survey in 111 Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh and 34 officials are conducting it in the 51 Bangladesh enclaves inside India.

The survey will end on Jul 16 and the transfer of the enclaves  will start on Jul 31.

There are 59 Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh’s Lalmonirhat district.  

Land record officials from both India and Bangladesh were present with other officials sides when the survey started at Bhitorkuti-Daspota on Monday.

The officials were involved in house-to-house survey for enumeration and ascertaining citizenship.

Their report will be placed before the Joint Boundary Working Group.

Indian and Bangladesh district officials met on Jul 2 at Lalmonirhat-Burimari land port to finalise the modalities of this survey.

On Jul 5, officials responsible for the survey were briefed and trained for a day.

According to a 2011 survey, there are 111 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh with 37,000 people residing there. The total area of these enclaves is 17,160 acres.

The Upenchaki enclave in Lalmonirhat, which accroding to the LBA will be part of mainland Bangladesh. Photo: Asaduzzaman Pramanik

On the other hand, 14,000 people reside in the 51 Bangladeshi enclaves in India with a total area of 7,110 acres.

According to the Land Boundary Agreement, India will get the 7,110 acres area and Bangladesh 17,160 acres once the agreement is implemented.

The deal also paved way for enclave residents to choose citizenship of either Bangladesh or India.

Residents of enclaves will be able to sell their land and take with them movable assets, like money, while migrating to the country of their choice as per the land swap deal between Bangladesh and India.

But before that they would have to apply for the citizenship of the country of their choice to the Bangladesh-India joint commission.