Dhubri, Sept. 4: AGP leaders will visit Boroibari in Assam’s Dhubri district tomorrow to protest against the reported move of the Centre to hand over 571 bighas to Bangladesh in a bid to resolve the issue of adverse possession of land between the two countries.

The party’s move comes almost a quarter of a century after mutely witnessing the virtual ceding of Boroibari to Bangladesh.

It was during the AGP’s first term in Dispur that the land, which belonged to India but was in possession of Bangladesh, was fenced out in 1987, virtually handing it over to Bangladesh on a platter.

The BSF’s foray into the hamlet in South Salmara Mancahchar sub-division in April 2001 to reclaim it ended in a disaster with villagers and BDR jawans lynching 16 of them. The BSF had moved in retaliation to the BDR occupying Pyrdiwah, an area which belonged to Bangladesh but was in possession of India along the Meghalaya border, a couple of days earlier.

Chief minister Tarun Gogoi left for Calcutta this evening enroute to Dhaka as part of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s team. The issue of adverse possession of lands will come up in meetings between the countries.

AGP president Chandra Mohan Patowari and working president Phani Bhushan Choudhury, on the other hand, are headed for Boroibari tomorrow to register the AGP’s protest against the reported move to hand over land to Bangladesh.

Asked what prompted the AGP to take up the Boroibari land issue after a gap of nearly 25 years, party spokesperson Enamul Haque said it did not take up the issue earlier as the land was under the adverse possession of Bangladesh and there had been incidents of firing when fencing work was under way.

But now the AGP has found its voice, as the Congress government was giving up the claim on Boroibari and preparing to hand over its possession to Bangladesh officially.

Pointing out that some residents of the village had paid revenue to Mancachar revenue circle till 1957 and that another person was allotted seven bighas by the then Goalpara deputy commissioner in 1975, Haque said the Congress’s “meek diplomacy” had now brought the situation to such a pass.

While the AGP aims its guns at the Congress, people of Mancachar blame the AGP for the Boraibari issue.

Sheikh Boddrud Zaman Firdowsy, a lecturer in Hatsighimari College, while resenting the government’s reported move, rued the loss of BSF lives.

“Their sacrifice has gone in vain,” he said.