Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 7 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Friday said “internal contradictions” of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had impacted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Bangladesh and called upon the government to come out with details of land boundary agreement reached during the visit which had “raised concerns in Assam”.

The party Friday formed a group to study the land swap agreement with Bangladesh.

Headed by party’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha S.S. Ahluwalia, the group includes party MPs Bijoya Chakraborty, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Chandan Mitra and party national secretary Murlidhar Rao. Former party MP Sarbonand Sonval will be the group’s coordinator.

A party release said that there is concern in Assam that details of land swap agreement had not been made public.

It demanded that the government should tell if Assam cabinet discussed details of the handover of state’s land to Bangladesh and when the MPs, legislators and people of villages concerned were informed of the decision.

Noting the that fourth joint boundary working group between India and Bangladesh “had cited 665 acres of Assamese land as being under adverse possesion of Bangladesh”, the BJP demanded that the Prime Minister’s Office immediately release details of the land swap agreement.

The government should reassure the citizens that India’s territorial integrity had not been compromised, it said.

The party said that there were about 40 lakh “Bangladeshi infiltrators in Assam” and the prime minister, being an MP from the state, is “fully aware of its implications”.

“How is it that this issue was not discussed during the recent visit? The demographic invasion is too critical an issue to be neglected any further,” the party said.

Earlier in the day, party leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley sought to know how much Indian territory had been given away to Bangladesh from Assam to settle the enclaves issue.

Sushma Swaraj said that before leaving for Bangladesh, the prime minister had held a meeting with BJP parliamentary party leader L.K. Advani and the two leaders of opposition.

“There had been no discussion with us on giving land from Assam to Bangladesh. So, if they say that BJP was taken on board, they are wrong… We don’t know what they have done,” Sushma Swaraj said.

India and Bangladesh signed a protocol to agreement concerning demarcation of land boundary Sep 6, which envisages the swap of territories under adverse possession of the two countries.

The BJP leaders said there can be no compromise with the country’s “territorial integrity”.

In an apparent reference to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s opposition to a treaty on the sharing of Teesta river waters, they said this was a “glaring example” of how differences within UPA have affected India’s foreign policy initiatives.