Bangladesh, India census tackles border confusion

DHAKA: Bangladesh and India launched on Thursday a census of "enclaves" -- areas where one country's territory is surrounded by the other -- in an effort to end complex border disputes.

Kamal Uddin Ahmed, a government official in Dhaka, said the first-ever census would count people living in 111 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh and 55 Bangladeshi enclaves in India.

"A total of 125 joint teams of Indian and Bangladeshi officials will do the count within one week," he told AFP.

Officials said the census would help assess anomalies that date to the creation of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in 1947, since when people in the enclaves have been living as state-less refugees.

Ties between India and Bangladesh have improved in recent years, and a deal to solve the issue of enclaves may been signed during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Dhaka in September.

The details of any agreement are unclear, but Ahmed said the two countries planned to swap some of the smallest enclaves.

The islands of land result from ownership arrangements made centuries ago between local princes, surviving partition of the sub-continent after British rule in 1947 and Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence with Pakistan.

Most historians believe the messy situation originates from 18th-century peace treaties between the kingdom of Cooch Behar, now in the Indian state of West Bengal, and the Mughal empire, which ruled much of South Asia.

But local folklore suggests some enclaves were wagers during chess games involving the Maharaja of Cooch Behar and the Faujdar of Rangpur, who then ruled northern Bangladesh.

The number of people in the enclaves is estimated to range from 150,000 to 300,000. Residents often lack basic services such as electricity and schools because they are cut off from their national governments.

There are no marked borders separating the enclaves from surrounding land, but the movements of those who live in them are often restricted by checkpoints.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011