Ending the 41-year of wait of over 50,000 enclave people, Indian Lok Sabha has passed constitutional amendment bill aiming to materialise Bangladesh-India Land Boundary Agreement – 1974, a day after Rajya Sabha passed the bill.

The bill was unanimously passed on Thursday at local time 4:20pm after Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had placed the bill for passage before Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian parliament, according to different media reports.

The passage of this bill is expected to pave the way for a permanent settlement of long-standing land boundary disputes between the two countries.

The materialisation of LBA might also change the maps of the two countries which are expected to start enclaves exchange programme soon.

Earlier Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament, passed the much-awaited Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) bill on Wednesday, a day after the bill got cabinet’s nod.

The Lok Sabha rubberstamped the constitutional amendment bill that has effectively ratified the LBA, also known as the Mujib-Indira treaty of 1974.

The Bill was also unanimously passed by India’s upper house Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. The LBA will come into effect as soon the Indian President assents to it.

Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi phoned Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and conveyed his greetings to the people of Bangladesh on this landmark occasion.

“Today a historic milestone has been reached in India-Bangladesh relations after the passing of the Constitutional Amendment by Parliament,” Modi twitted after the Lok Sabha passed the Bill.

Modi also personally thanked Congress leader Sonia Gandhi in the Lok Sabha after lawmakers cleared the land swap that Bangladesh and India have been negotiating for years.

The Constitutional amendment that was approved by the Lower House is intended to end decades of uncertainty for tens of thousands of citizens living in enclaves on the “wrong” side of their homeland’s border. Fifteen states in India now have to clear the amendment, which is unlikely to be a problem.

Dozens of enclaves exist on either side of the border, a historical oddity left after the partition in 1947.

The proposed solution would enable each side to acquire the enclaves within its borders, along with other disputed territories.

People living in the enclaves would have the right to move to live in their original country of nationality or to become nationals of their ‘new’ country after the exchange. Most are expected to stay put, according to the Indian government.

The Bill, which the Bharatiya Janata Party, Asom Gana Parishad and Trinamool Congress had opposed when it was brought by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2013, amends the First Schedule of the Constitution to give effect to an agreement entered into by India and Bangladesh on the acquiring and transfer of territories between the two countries on May 16, 1974.

In 2011, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina had signed the land swap deal known as the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA).

The constitutional amendment bill to operationalise the agreement was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in 2013 but could not be passed due to stiff opposition.

When the Narendra Modi government came to power, the Bill was again sent to the standing committee on the external affairs ministry, and a report presented in December 2014.

Earlier on Tuesday, faced with opposition from Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and the Congress party in Parliament as well as unhappiness from the Bangladesh government, the Indian government reversed its decision on excluding Assam from the purview of its Bill on exchanging land with Bangladesh.

An earlier plan by the Indian government to exclude Assam from the land swap arrangement because of fierce resistance from the BJP’s Assam unit ahead of state elections this year has now been shelved.

According the agreement, India is to receive 2,777.038 acres of land and to transfer 2267.682 acres to Bangladesh, much of which has already been effected on the ground already.