Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
New Delhi
India and Bangladesh kept the contentious issue of National Register of Citizens (NRC) on the back burner and instead focused on steps to build ties on security, trade and transportation links. The two sides took the first step towards a riverwater-sharing pact and agreed to improve their border management to ensure zero killing of civilians by the BSF.
Both sides opted to paper over the uncertainties due to NRC after Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina raised it. India opened its purse strings for Rohingya refugees stranded in Bangladesh and PM Narendra Modi conveyed to Hasina that the process for declaring a citizen stateless would take a number of years. “In essence, what they agreed upon was to cross the bridge when it comes,’’ said a source.
India had earlier quelled Bangladeshi misgivings on the NRC in Assam during External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s visit to Dhaka and then at a meeting between PM Modi and his Bangladesh counterpart in New York.
But fresh concern has arisen in Bangladesh after Union Home Minister Amit Shah spoke about extending NRC to the entire country and giving citizenship to all those not figuring in the register, barring Muslims. The statement has ignited a debate in Bangladesh and raised the possibility of radicals there attempting to force out land-owning Hindus, said sources close to Hasina. The two sides focused on forging closer security, trade, transportation and communication links by signing seven pacts and launching three projects, including one for selling LPG to Indian Oil Corporation. Bangladesh exports to India have crossed $ 1 billion in 2019, a rise of 52%.
PM Modi pointed out that that the pacts served the “single cause of easing the lives of people and strengthening relations between the two countries.’’
The two sides will conduct their first-ever joint naval exercise. They discussed ways to operationalise an Indian $ 500 million line of credit and noted the progress made in setting up a coastal radar surveillance system in Bangladesh. If the agreement goes through, India will extend its seamless coastal coverage to the Maldives, Seychelles and Sri Lanka.
On riverwater-sharing
Bangladesh complained of restrictions on its citizens using land ports to enter India, anti-dumping duty on jute products and loss of lives at the border; India raised the restrictions on trade via Akhaura-Agartala
Bangladesh and India decided to raise the frequency of Maitree Express to 5 times per week and of Bandhan Express twice a week besides plans to start Dhaka-Siliguri bus service
A pact on sharing Teesta waters remains in the works but the two sides agreed to prepare the draft framework of interim sharing pacts for six rivers, besides firming up draft framework of pact on Feni river
