Senior BJP leaders hosted the Indian tri-colour on the ‘disputed’ Lathitila-Dumabari area on Sunday, promising to start an agitation if this stretch of borderland was transferred to Bangladesh.Under the 2011 land boundary agreement, Bangladesh is supposed to get this area, which is located in Karimganj district of India’s northeastern state of Assam.
According to the 2011 land boundary agreement that awaits ratification in the Indian parliament, the 94.6 acres at Lathitila and 299.04 acres in Paliathal, which have been in adverse possession of Bangladesh since 1965 (when it was East Pakistan), have been ceded to Bangladesh.
The Congress-led UPA coalition does not have sufficient parliamentary majority – so it has sought support from main opposition BJP to push the bill through to formalise the 2011 land boundary agreement.
But the BJP appears to be in no mood to concede ground.
The saffron party’s national vice-president S S Ahluwalia, Assam state president Sarbananda Sonowal and MP BIjoya Chakraborty (from Assam) stormed into Lathitila with 200 supporters on Sunday and hosted the Indian flag there.
The BSF troops stopped the BJP supporters between border pillar 1397 and 1400 and only allowed the leaders to get into Lathitila to plant the Indian flag.
“The land swap deal signed between India and Bangladesh is a compromise of Indian sovereignity. It is full of errors and Assam’s interest has been sacrificed,” Sonowal told local journalists.
“We will start a full scale agitation if there is an attempt to hand over our territory to Bangladesh,” he said.
Sonowal, from his days as the chief of the All Assam Students Union (AASU), has tirelessly campaigned against “illegal migration from Bangladesh”, which he says has “changed Assam’s demography dangerously”.
After a spell in Asom Gana Parishad, Sonowal joined the BJP and is now its state unit president.
Both the Asom Gana Parishad and the BJP wants the land swap deal signed between India and Bangladesh in 2011 scrapped. – UNB
