Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in Dhaka to do the spadework for Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's proposed upcoming visit to India in October. Diplomatic sources in New Delhi said Jaishankar would hold talks with his Bangladesh counterpart Dr. A K Abdul Momen on Tuesday before calling on Hasina on the same day. Speeding up Rohingya repatriation issue will also be discussed by them with due importance.
Sheikh Hasina will visit India in October next to discuss bilateral issues, including the ones related to common rivers, to infuse new dynamism in relations between Bangladesh and India forward. Hasina will attend India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum in New Delhi with the theme "Innovating for India: Strengthening South Asia, Impacting the World" to be held on October 3-4, a diplomatic source said.
Since this is the first visit of Jaishankar to Bangladesh, he would like to combine the customary familiarization with intensive talks with the top leadership of that country on a range of bilateral issues. “The main focus of Jaishankar’s visit to Dhaka would be doing the groundwork for a fruitful visit by Hasina,” a source said.
India is a leading development partner of Bangladesh and has extended soft loans and grant-in-assistance totalling around $8 billion in the last eight years for infrastructure, mainly rail, projects. The talks between Jaishankar and Momen are likely to focus on speedier implementation of the projects under the line of credit and identify the bottlenecks retarding the pace of implementation.
During talks with Jaishankar, Momen is likely to emphasize on faster sanctioning of funds by India for the projects under the line of credit, the sources said. The summit will have a special focus on promoting deeper collaboration between South Asia and South East Asia to leverage their distinctive demographic and digital dividends to boost global growth and enhance collective future.
Hasina’s previous state visit to India had taken place on April 7-10, 2017, nearly two years after Indian PM Narendra Modi’s landmark visit to Bangladesh to Dhaka in June 2015. The sharing of the waters 54 common rivers and the Rohingya refugee crisis are also expected to be high on the agenda of Jaishankar’s discussions with Bangladesh leaders.
According to officials, projects under the three Indian lines of credit of around $7.5 billion are facing delays mainly due to technical and bureaucratic reasons.
In the last eight years, Bangladesh managed to use $523 million of the $862-million first LoC despite various steps to expedite use of the funds. Bangladesh has so far used $14 million of the $2-billion second LoC.
On the Rohingya issue, Jaishankar is expected to assure the Bangladesh leaders of India’s continued and sustained cooperation for their safe and dignified return to Myanmar’s Rakhine province, according to the sources. Jaishnakar is also likely to stress on the need for the much-delayed Rohingya repatriation process to take off even with a small number of refugees.
India has provided material support to Bangladesh for the upkeep of Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar and also built 250 houses in Rakhine under a 25-million dollar l assistance for socio-economic development in Rakhine so that refugees can return to start living there again.
