Teesta pact with Bangladesh to be finalised soon

Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s June 6-7 visit to Bangladesh, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday said the Teesta Water-Sharing Act will be finalised soon. The deal is of great political significance to Dhaka.

“The Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh has already been decided and the Teesta deal will also be finalised soon. We are confident of getting full cooperation from the Mamata Banerjee government,” he told newspersons here on Tuesday.

Banerjee’s resistance forced former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to return from Dhaka without signing the Teesta pact, in 2011.

While it is not yet clear if the deal will be signed next month; there is little doubt that the political deadlock has ended with Banerjee walking the talk; preparations are on for sharing Teesta water.

“It is not clear if the elaborate preparations for water-sharing pact are over,” Sreeradha Datta, Director of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies in Kolkata told BusinessLine . However, she added that the Prime Minister may announce India’s in-principle agreement to the deal and create a framework for time-bound action.”

Many agreements Teesta apart, there will be no dearth of announcements during Modi’s visit. The two nations are expected to enter a pact on coastal shipping.

In the absence of direct shipping arrangement, India and Bangladesh are now heavily dependent on costly land routes (via West Bengal) for nearly $7-billion bilateral trade. It will particularly help Bangladeshi exporters to access the major consumption centres of southrern and western India.

According to leading Bangladeshi newspaper PrathomAlo , the two nations may revisit a host of agreements on bilateral trade, inland water transport, sharing of marine resources and so on for better economic integration.

Joint initiatives are expected in the areas of climate change, education and culture. India may also announce major investment decisions in the infrastructure sector in Bangladesh and offer fresh lines of credit.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Seikh Hasina will pitch for a higher FDI flows from India. Despite a sharp growth in recent years, Indian investment in Bangladesh was a meagre $ 67 million in 2014.

In exchange for greater economic and political engagement by India, the Hasina government is likely to grant India access to the North-East through Bangladesh. The two nations are like to enter a pact on standardising motor vehicle rules for this.

As the first step, the two Prime Ministers will flag off a Kolkata -Agartala (Tripura) bus service through Bangladesh. According to Jitendra Chaudhury, CPI (M) MP from Tripura, this will reduce the distance from Kolkata to Agartala from 1,500 km to 350 km. The travelling time will be cut short from nearly three days to barely half a day. This new service is in addition to an existing link to Dhaka from Kolkata and Agartala.

“This is a great move in ending North Eastern region’s isolation from the rest of India,” he said. Rajnath Singh also confirmed that the trial run for the Kolkata-Agartala (via Bangladesh) bus service was complete. “We are hopeful of making it operational soon.” he said.

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