Border confce postponed as BSF team fails to arrive

The top-level conference between the Border Guard Bangladesh and the Indian Border Security Force scheduled to begin in Dhaka on Sunday was postponed.

The postponement followed the failure of the BSF aircraft carrying the delegation to take off due to a reported technical glitch in the aircraft, according to officials.

The BSF did not make any public statement about the postponement or the reason behind it.

But the Indian state-owned DD News reported on Sunday at 7:32am that the DG-level meeting between  the BSF and the BGB scheduled to start on Sunday in  Dhaka was postponed for a few days.

The DD News said that new dates would be announced soon.

The report kept saying that the 6-day meeting was scheduled to discuss issues related to border management, fencing and development works along the international borders of the two neighbours.

The bi-annual talks between the BSF and the BGB started in 1975 and were held alternately in Dhaka and Delhi.

BGB public relations officer Shariful Islam in a statement said that the conference could not be started as scheduled and the new schedule was not confirmed yet.

In the statement, he said that as the international flights on the Dhaka–Delhi and Dhaka–Kolkota routes were suspended until September 30, the BSF delegation was scheduled to join the conference in Dhaka by their own aircraft.

But, the BGB statement read, due to a technical glitch the BSF delegation could not reach Dhaka on Sunday.

As a result of this, the statement went on, the scheduled conference could not be started on September 13 and the next date could not be confirmed.

Until 6:00pm, the BGB officials did not announce new dates for the conference.

Asked, a joint secretary at Bangladesh’s home ministry said in the evening that so far they came to know that the conference was postponed due to their (India’s) aircraft as special flights needed to carry out many formalities for their international movements.

Bangladesh civil aviation and tourism ministry officials told New Age that the defence wing of the India High Commission in Dhaka in an email stated that the BSF special flights scheduled for 13 and 18 September 2020 were cancelled due to ‘administrative reasons’.

The conference has been postponed against the backdrop of unabated killings along the border despite repeated promises from India while an Indian rights group accused the BSF of using lethal weapons instead of non-lethal ones contrary to its promises to Bangladesh.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net