The chief minister of West Bengal Mamata Banarjee is scheduled to arrive in Dhaka Thursday on a 3-day visit.
“We hope the visit will deepen Bangladesh’s soul-ties with the West Bengal. We also expect it’ll create supportive environment in settling unresolved issues between Dhaka and Delhi,” State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam told a select group of reporters on Wednesday.
Incumbents hope Mamata’s visit would help sign the much publicised Teesta Water Treaty that India’s former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wanted to sign during his visit to Dhaka in 2011.
Mamata now faces a more hostile government at India’s centre and has on more than one occasion given impression of her mind to improve ties with Dhaka that might also increase her standing in popularity in her Paschimbanga state.A day before her arrival in Dhaka Indian water expert Prof. Pranab Kumar Roy told a roundtable in Dhaka that Bangladesh would not benefit much from Teesta treaty. Instead a network of barrages on the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Barak river systems inside Bangladesh would ensure water storage during the wet season and make water available during the dry months, he suggested.
Water experts from and activists from Bangladesh who attended the seminar held at the National Press Club in Dhaka however differed from Prof. Pranab Kumar Roy’s suggestion. The seminar was sponsored by the daily Bhorer Kagaj and abnews24.com.
Mamata has recently been accused by the central government of India of sheltering Islamists from Bangladesh and has been blamed for the Bardwan blasts. Her government of late has taken steps to restrict the unaccounted for production and supply of Pensidyl syrup to the border areas. Pensidyl is taken as a drug by addicts. Recent actions by the West Bengal government revealed that if the drug administration keeps track of production and marketing of the drug huge additional production targeting the addicts in Bangladesh is simply impossible. – Staff Reporter
