BJP has indicated it may not support the Constitution amendment bill the Indian government is placing in the Parliament to give effect to the 2011 Indo-Bangladesh land boundary agreement.
Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid has been persuading all opposition parties including the BJP to support the bill in “national interests to take forward improving relations with Bangladesh”.
Khurshid has tried to impress on the opposition lawmakers and leaders that Bangladesh is now India’s most friendly and important neighbour — a country that Indians trust the most, as revealed in a recent survey commissioned by the Hindu newspaper and the CNN-IBN channel.
But BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, a former Finance Minister of the country, has told journalists that it was not possible for his party to support the bill because the “government has not taken all stakeholders into confidence”.
“The government has ruined our relations with all neighbours,” he said.
Sinha belongs to the hardline BJP faction led by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi who is backed by the party’s national president Rajnath Singh.
But BJP moderates like former Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, leader in Upper House Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj as well as former Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani seems to be in favour of the deal.
The bill will be placed by the government in the ongoing monsoon session of the Parliament.
“We are into last ditch efforts to convince the BJP to get this through,” said an official of the ministry of external affairs.
But Delhi’s political circles are less than optimistic.
Source: Bd news24
