Dhaka to focus on Teesta deal, Ganges barrage

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina is likely to visit India for four days starting from April 7 with a plan to hold official talks with her counterpart Narendra Modi in New Delhi on April 8.
The two governments are expected to formally declare the schedule of the visit soon while the officials in two capitals have been working on setting agendas for the talks and agreements expected to be signed during the visit.
The Bangladesh government would put emphasis on signing an agreement on sharing of Teesta River water, construction of the Ganges Barrage with participation of India, completion of the implementation of the land boundary agreement and removal of anti-dumping duty on jute imposed by India, among several other issues, officials in Dhaka and New Delhi said. 
An interim agreement on Teesta water sharing was set to be signed on September 6, 2011 during former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Dhaka. It, however, could not be signed because of the last minute objection raised by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
India is pushing Bangladesh for signing several agreements, in the fields of defence ‘cooperation’ and military purchase under a line-of-suppliers-credit of $500 million from Indian state-run producers, the officials said.
The Indian government has also proposed several agreements likely to be implemented by its state-run Bharat Electronics Limited, which has specialisation in avionics, Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd, which holds specialisation in warship building, and Indian Navy.
India is also pursuing the signing of agreements for using Chittagong and Mongla seaports for carrying goods from western part of India to its eastern states using multimodal transport mechanism 
at a nominal fee.
Officials of the two sides finalised about 20 drafts of agreements and memorandums of understanding, out of about 40 proposals from both sides in considerations, in different sectors. 
As Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party won elections in four states, the Times of India said in an article published on Sunday that Modi’s political strength ‘will help in his dealings’ with countries within India’s immediate neighbourhood. 
‘An immediate beneficiary is likely to be Bangladesh PM, Sheikh Hasina, who will probably be the first to visit India in April. Modi is likely to go around Mamata Banerjee’s obstructions to work out a deeper security and resources-sharing relationship with Bangladesh,’ it said. 
Hasina’s official visit to New Delhi was postponed twice in December 2016 and February 2017.
The visit was set to take place against the backdrop of the state visit of the Chinese president, Xi Jingpin, to Dhaka in October 2016, when 27 agreements, memorandums of understanding and protocols were signed between the two governments involving about $20 billion Chinese investment in Bangladesh, in addition to 13 deals among the business sectors of the two countries and the commissioning of two submarines procured from China for the Bangladesh Navy.
This would be Hasina’s first bilateral visit to India after assumption of power by the Narendra Modi-led BJP government in the neighbouring country. 
Indian defence minister Manohar Parrikar visited Dhaka in November 2016 and foreign secretary S Jaishankar on February 23, 2017 for preparations of Hasina’s visit to New Delhi.
Modi visited Dhaka in June 2015. 

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