LBA passage great political achievement: PM
The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Saturday said it was the great political achievement of her government in diplomatic arena as the Indian parliament has cleared a bill to ratify the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh.‘It is a great political achievement of the government in diplomatic arena,’ she told a function at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agriculture University marking its 16th founding anniversary.The prime minister said, ‘Yesterday night (Friday night) I talked to the Indian prime minister, the foreign minister, Sonia Gandhi, the chief ministers of Assam, Tripura and West Bengal to convey the heartiest thanks on my behalf and the people of Bangladesh.’Hasina said not a single MP of the Indian parliament opposed the passage of the Bill. ‘This Bill was passed unanimously, this is a great achievement for Bangladesh,’ she said.
The legislation was the 119th amendment to the Indian Constitution.Both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha unanimously cleared the historic bill which would operationalise the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh providing for exchange of territories to settle the 41-year-old border issue.Hasina said the matter was included in 1974’s Mujib-India treaty and Bangladesh ratified that at then. ‘But India couldn’t ratify the treaty for their internal problems,’ she said.The prime minister also mentioned that the governments came to power in Bangladesh after 1975 never asked India to ratify the agreement. ‘After coming power to 1996, Awami League took up the matter and started negotiations with India,’ Hasina added.In this connection, the prime minister said the demarcation of border had started at then. ‘We agreed on the whole border area’s demarcation except some 6.5 km,’ she added.
Hasina mentioned that coming in the power in 2001 the BNP-Jamaat alliance did not advanced the matter further.‘When we come again in the power in 2009, the government initiated the matter again,’ she said.Hasina said when she visited India on January 10, 2010 a joint statement was issued and the matter of LBA was included in that joint statement. ‘Before that no one talked about the LBA,’ she added.She said when then Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh came to Bangladesh on September 6-8, 2011 the government signed a protocol on LBA and solved the un-demarcated 6.5 km border area.Recalling the propaganda against the Mujib-Indira Treaty, she said Awami League had to hear all the last 40 years that that Treaty was a ‘treaty of slavery for 40 years’. ‘Now everyone will realise that it was false propaganda against Awami League, now it is proved that Bangladesh has been the gainer by that Treaty,’ she added saying that if the Awami League could not come to power the LBA could not be ratified in the Indian parliament.She also said it is a common allegation against Awami League that it was India’s collaborator. ‘But the fact is that those who claimed not the collaborators are the real collaborators and that’s why they couldn’t realise Bangladesh’s dues.’The prime minister said that the policy of Awami League is to live with the head keeping high.
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