Dhaka, June 6 (IANS) The Joint Boundary Working Group of Bangladesh and India is expected to meet next month to comprehensively address long-pending land boundary disputes, a media report quoting officials said here.
Both sides are working to implement various decisions and fulfil commitments made by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during her New Delhi visit in January.
They also decided to work on 115 enclaves created by the demarcation of the boundary determined by the British between India and the then East Pakistan during the 1947 partition of undivided India.
The partition was on Hindu-Muslim lines. However, these enclaves, considered ‘in adverse possession’, have Muslim majority areas in India and Hindu majority areas in Bangladesh.
The South Asian neighbours having a porous 4,098 km border are committed to addressing the land boundary issues keeping the spirit of the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement signed by the then prime ministers, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Indira Gandhi.
‘The joint boundary group will meet either on July or August to resolve the boundary disputes between the two countries,’ India’s Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said in New Delhi on Friday.
However, Bangladesh officials maintain that they were ready to convene the meeting much earlier.
Officials of foreign and home ministries here are hopeful that the Joint Boundary Working Group will resolve issues related to adverse possessions, enclaves and the un-demarcated areas, Pillai said.