Indo-Bangladesh team visits enclaves

COOCH BEHAR, May 29: An Indo-Bangladesh joint working group is visiting the Indo-Bangladesh borders and chhitmahals (enclaves) in Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri districts. They started their three-day programme yesterday.

The members of the Indian team led by the Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka, Mr Pinak Ranjan Chakraborty arrived at Jalpaiguri yesterday. Later, they visited Tinbigha corridor in Mekhliganj sub-division yesterday. The joint secretary of ministry of foreign affairs, Mr Mohan Kumar, district magistrate of Cooch Behar Mr Rajesh Kumar Sinha, Cooch Behar SP Mr Anil Kumar and senior BSF and administrative officials accompanied the team.

The Indian team went to Bangladesh side this morning to visit the Indian enclaves where their counterparts in Bangladesh joined them. The leader of the Bangladesh team is Md Mojibar Rahman, joint secretary (political) ministry of home affairs, Bangladesh. The members of the joint team came back to Indian side this afternoon. Tomorrow the joint group will visit enclaves and adverse positions along the border in Jalpaiguri. On the next day the members will leave the region.

Highly placed sources said that the joint working group is to study the existing situation along Indo-Bangladesh border, adverse positions, chhitmahals (enclaves), facilities like water supply and power supply that were penned down in the agreement during handing over the Tinbigha corridor to Bangladesh, etc. It may be recalled here that the Tinbigha corridor was handed over to Bangladesh on 26 June in 1992 for use of Bangladesh nationals to access Dahagram and Angarpota chhitmahals (enclaves) from mainland of Bangladesh.

It was learnt that the aim of the joint visit is to examine the proposal to keep the Tinbigha corridor round-the-clock and construction of a flyover on the corridor. Long-standing demand to exchange the chhitmahals of both countries to wind up border problems and the plight of the residents of the chhitmahals may also be studied by the joint team. Once the chhitmahals exchanged the residents of these enclaves may get their legitimate rights from their countries. There are 111 chhitmahals of India inside Bangladesh and 56 of Bangladesh inside India, official sources said. []