How Modi brought BJP around on India-Bangladesh land deal

Agreement aims at exchange of enclaves between the two countries to resolve their messy border

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at Guwahati, on Sunday, attempted a tricky tightrope walk. He told Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers at a public meeting that the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh, which the local Assam unit of the party had opposed in 2011, is beneficial for the country.

At the same time, he promised to address the problem of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants of the state.

Modi has tried to put national interest over the electoral interests of his party in not just Assam but also the neighbouring West Bengal. The assessment is that the BJP's commitment to address another emotive problem of Assam and Bengal, that of the illegal immigration from Bangladesh, will help the party overcome any political setback it might suffer because of pushing for the agreement.

Modi has tried to bring the BJP leadership in Assam on board on the issue, while the party is likely to "expose aggressively" the ruling Congress in Assam and Trinamool Congress in West Bengal "protecting infiltrators from Bangladesh". This balancing act is a key to the BJP for doing well in the Assembly elections in Assam and West Bengal, likely to be held in mid-2016.

The agreement, which requires Parliamentary ratification, was introduced in the Rajya Sabha as the 119th amendment in 2011, aims at exchange of enclaves between India and Bangladesh to resolve messy border issue. It was signed between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and counterpart Hasina in Dhaka in September 2011. The agreement was reached at after detailed surveys. India, as part of the agreement, would hand over control of 111 enclaves amounting to 17,160 acres and get from Bangladesh 57 enclaves across 7,110 acres. These enclaves are in Assam and Bengal.

It is this allegedly “unequal” exchange of territories that the Trinamool and Assam Gana Parishad made a political issue that forced the then government to postpone a vote on the Bill, which being a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority in the two Houses of Parliament. The local units of the BJP in both Assam and Bengal were also opposed, although the central leadership of the BJP was non-committal on opposition to the Bill.

On Sunday, Modi indicated that his government is likely to push for the passage of the 119th amendment of the Constitution. Both AGP and Trinamool will try rake it up again as "surrender" of the interests of Assam and Bengal, and it will be up to the Modi-led BJP to counter this propaganda in the run-up to the 2016 Assembly elections in the two states.