India cabinet approves bill to operationalise land boundary deal with Bangladesh
Setting at rest all speculation, the Indian cabinet today approved a constitution amendment bill to operationalise the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh that includes Assam.
A meeting of the cabinet, presided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was held this morning to clear the bill that is likely to come up in Rajya Sabha tomorrow.
The bill is aimed at ratifying the LBA between India and Bangladesh under the Indira-Mujib pact of 1974 to exchange areas and people on either side of the border.
Highly placed sources said the BJP-led NDA government has already talked to various parties in the Upper House, where an earlier bill in this regard has been pending since December 2013.
The government had earlier proposed to bring the bill by keeping Assam out of its purview but faced stiff resistance from the main opposition Congress party which wanted territories in Assam to be included.
The inclusion of Assam territories in the bill indicates the government's resolve to get the legislation cleared after bringing all parties on board.
The government will bring the Constitutional Amendment Bill for ratification of the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh and will require ratification of at least 50 percent of the state legislatures of West Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya before it comes into effect.
The clearing of the bill by Union Cabinet comes a day after the top leadership of BJP and RSS discussed the bill with its Assam leaders late on Monday night and decided to include Assam, sensing that the bill had no chance of passage in Rajya Sabha, where ruling BJP lacks majority.
BJP wanted to keep Assam out of the LBA implementation, fearing its prospects in assembly elections would be a hit if the state was included. The elections are slated for next year.
The BJP leaders from Assam had earlier demanded that Assam should be delinked from the bill as a land swap in which the state would stand to lose 268 acres.
On the other hand, Congress had demanded that Assam should not be delinked from the bill and its territories be included and had opposed the exclusion of Assam from its ambit.
While the government has got various states, including Trinamool Congress-ruled West Bengal, Left-ruled Tripura and Meghalaya, on board on the issue, its decision to keep Assam out of it has irked Congress which rules Assam.
Although India and Bangladesh signed the LBA way back in 1974, an additional protocol was inked in September, 2011 during the then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Dhaka.