India and Bangladesh swap border enclaves

Описание: (1 Aug 2015) At the stroke of midnight on Friday, tens of thousands of stateless people who were stranded for decades along the poorly defined border between India and Bangladesh finally got to choose their citizenship.
As the two countries swapped more than 150 pockets of land to settle the demarcation line dividing them, thousands of people who have been living in the enclaves in Bangladesh cheered, danced and chanted
Nearly 37,000 people lived in 111 Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh, while 14,000 lived in 51 Bangladeshi enclaves in India.
None from Bangladeshi enclaves within India opted for Bangladesh, while 979 people from Indian enclaves living inside Bangladesh applied for Indian citizenship, said Akhteruzzman Azad, chief government administrator at Kurigram district in Bangladesh.
Relations between India and its smaller neighbour Bangladesh have significantly improved since Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promised that her administration would not allow India's separatist insurgents to use the porous 4,000-kilometre (2,500 mile) border to carry out raids in India.
Aided by India, Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan following a bloody nine-month war in 1971.
The boundary dispute has been lingering since British colonialists carved Pakistan out of India in 1947, and granted independence to the two countries.

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