Bangladesh raises Teesta water sharing, boundary issues with India

New Delhi: Bangladesh has raised the issue of two pending pacts with India, the Teesta waters agreement and the Land Boundary Agreement with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hopes he will be able to deliver on them.

In an interview to this newspaper on Tuesday, the Speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury said, “We have walked-the-talk with regard to Teesta waters and the Land Boundary pact. These are pending issues and we’re hopeful that these will be resolved in the near future.”

The Speaker who represented her country at the swearing-in ceremony of the Narendra Modi government on Monday said she raised the matter of the two pacts with him during the bilateral meeting on Tuesday. Yet another contentious issue between the two neighbours, the Tipaimukh dam on the Barak river in Manipur, however, did not come up for discussion during the bilateral meeting.  

She said she told the new PM that these are “pending issues” that Bangladesh seeks his cooperation in resolving.

Noting that the two countries have not been able to see these two agreements reach their conclusion, Ms Chaudhury said Mr Modi assured her these issues would be considered and everything possible would be done.

Incidentally, there was opposition from within the BJP itself to the Land Boundary agreement when the previous Congress-led UPA government had attempted to build political consensus on it. This was necessary for the agreement to be ratified by Parliament for it to come into effect.

Regarding the BJP’s poll issue of  illegal migrants from Bangladesh was raised by her, Ms Chaudhury said, “We didn’t have any discussion on this.” 

Asked for her comments on this matter, she said, “I don’t have any comments on this because now an elected government is in place.”

While refusing to set a time-frame by when her country would like to see the Teesta pact to come into force, the Speaker emphasised, “What’s important is that it materialises.”

With regard to the Land Boundary Agreement, she said it’s ratification will help resolve pending issue that have been there for the last five decades. Further, she said , it was important for the two neighbours to define their territory and borders.

“Both the countries should have it in place as a settled issue and the enclaves are being used for different purposes and sometimes this may create  difficulties,” she said.