News desk: New Delhi is attaching a “lot of importance” to the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visit beginning Friday, says the spokesperson of India's ministry of external affairs.
Gopal Baglay said they hoped the visit would “pave the way for greater friendship between the countries,” reports bdnews24.com.
“This is a very important visit,” he said while interacting with a group of Bangladesh journalists at the South Block on Wednesday.
Ministry of External Affairs Joint Secretary, Bangladesh and Myanmar desk, Sripriya Ranganathan was also present.
“This is not an ordinary visit,” Ranganathan supplemented. “The relation is already at its best. But this visit will take it to a new high.”
A group of eight journalists is visiting New Delhi at the invitation of the external affairs ministry ahead of the prime minister’s four-day visit.
This comes seven years after her last official visit in Jan 2010 and two years after her counterpart Narendra Modi’s visit to Bangladesh in June 2015.
The two leaders will hold official talks in New Delhi on Apr 8.
During the visit, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali said they were expecting to sign about 35 agreements and memorandum of understanding including cyber security, technology, nuclear power, science, and defence.
There is no progress in sight to resolve the pending Teesta water issue during the visit that prompted the opposition BNP leaders in Dhaka to criticise the visit.
BNP said there would have no gain for Bangladesh from the Hasina visit unless the Teesta water sharing deal, which is blocked by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, can be signed.
BNP has also opposed any defence cooperation pact with India even as both sides are discussing to “streamline” the existing defence cooperation.
Indian president Pranab Mukherjee has invited Mamata Banerjee to a dinner he is hosting for PM Hasina and is seeking to break the ice on Teesta.
Ranganathan who deals all issues on Bangladesh in the MEA said the work to finalise all the documents before the visit was still going on.
She said they need cabinet clearance for every document whether it is MoU or an agreement.
But she said that every engagement with Bangladesh is “meaningful in its own way”.
“There is no zero sum game in the relations with Bangladesh. This is the most comprehensive partnership we have today.”
She said they were still working on overcoming “internal difficulty” to resolve the Teesta water sharing issue. “You all know in our system we need to take the state government into confidence”.
Apart from the external affairs ministry, the journalists are also meeting senior officials of other ministries such as railway, power which are relevant to Bangladesh issue.
In the last seven years, India and Bangladesh have been heavily engaged in almost all sectors. That led to power grids connectivity and Bangladesh is getting Indian electricity to meet its ever-increasing demand.
Critics, however, create a perception that India gains everything and Bangladesh is not getting anything, pointing to the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, that she had addressed India’s long standing security concerns.
During BNP’s regime between 2001 and 2006, Indian insurgents used Bangladesh soil to operate against India.
A senior official in New Delhi, who was not willing to be named, said this security issue cannot be seen as being “exclusive interest of one country and at the cost of the other country”.
“That created the platform for the current level of engagements. Even the decades old pending land boundary agreement issue has been resolved due to that confidence”.
“Addressing India’s security concerns have created a mindset and changed the attitude towards Bangladesh in India,” the official said, “To me it was transformative in the relations”.
India, which already promised a $3 billion line of credit, is planning to extend another to the tune of $4 billion or more during the visit to fund dozens of development projects.
Some $200 million from the first line of credit was later converted to a grant for Padma bridge project.
Among other engagements, the prime minister would honour the families of Indian soldiers who fought in the 1971 Liberation War.
With her counterpart Modi, they would also release the Hindi translation of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s unfinished autobiography.
