Heartburn for land
Most residents of the 162 erstwhile enclaves inside Bangladesh and India finally have citizenship after 68 long years, but those left out of the 2011 census might find it hard to get citizenship and establish their ownership of land.
Disputes might arise over the ownership of around 1,000 acres of land in the former Bangladeshi enclaves inside India, said leaders of Bangladesh-India Enclave Exchange Coordination Committee and senior journalists in Cooch Behar, West Bengal.
Centenarian Bashratullah Miah of Kachua-5, previously a Bangladeshi enclave in India, has 31 members in his extended family. Each of them owns land, which produces three crops a year.
Talking to The Daily Star, Bashratullah's eldest son Liton Rahman said enumerators came to his house in 2011, but did not count any of his family members.
A Bangladesh-India joint team last month conducted a survey on the enclave people to implement the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA). The team put the names of enclave residents on a list, but left out those who were not counted in the 2011 census.
Bashratullah and his family members had no access to the survey camp this year. So they will not be eligible for citizenship and ownership of land.
Liton claimed that he has 25 bighas of land worth about Rs 3 crore, but he is worried that he might not be in possession of the land any more.
Another local, Noor Hossain, also has 25 bighas, but he fears the same fate.
Many enclave dwellers visited Diptiman Sengupta, leader of the enclave exchange coordination committee, in the last two weeks to discuss land ownership. Liton and Noor met him on the Eid day (July 18).
Diptiman said many residents believed that the enclaves would never be exchanged. So they didn't bother to register their names in 2011. And now they are in deep trouble.
The Bangladesh government took over the total land of 111 enclaves at Friday midnight. The land will be handed over to citizens with valid documents.
Some 70 families have lodged complaints with the Cooch Behar district administration about not getting citizenship, said sources.
Magistrate P Ulaganathan of Cooch Behar, however, said confirming the ownership of land would not be a problem. The district administration will conduct a survey on enclave land after the exchange of enclaves between the two countries is done, he added.
Cooch Behar-based journalist Sushanta Guha said many people tend to take land disputes to court. Once a case goes to court, the government cannot hand over the land to anybody until the case is disposed of, he noted.
Lawyer Ahsan Habib of Cooch Behar, who dealt with the enclave land issue for a long time, said ownership of many pieces of land will be settled by court. Some enclave residents have already started consulting lawyers about their land, added Ahsan.
Bangladesh, according to the LBA of 1974 and protocol, received 111 enclaves with 17,160 acres and ceded 51 enclaves with a land mass of 7,110 acres to India.
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