India’s failure to implement the Teesta river water-sharing deal and ratify Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh in the past four years has irked Communications Minister Obaidul Quader.
He let out his frustration in presence of the Indian Deputy High Commissioner in Dhaka, Sandeep Chakravorty, at a programme in the capital.
“India should remember that we, too, have to answer to our people,” Quader said on Wednesday.
“Friendship cannot be one-sided,” he went on, hinting that India should move fast to keep the bilateral ties warm.
The minister said the incumbent Sheikh Hasina-led government had extended its hands of friendship towards India.
“We too expect honest, neighbourly attitude from them (India),” he said.
The issues are likely to play an important role in the national election sometime at the end of December this year or early next year.
Foreign Minister Dipu Moni on her India visit last month met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arun Jaitley to rally support for the LBA and Teesta water-sharing deals.
The BJP had initially opposed introduction of the bills in Parliament.
“If this bill does not go through…they will surely become important issues in the rundown to parliament elections in my country,” she had said.
The Land Boundary Agreement involves swapping 111 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh with 51 Bangladesh enclaves in India and preserve status quo on the adversely possessed swathes of land.
Opposition BJP had accused the Congress-led coalition government of ignoring the people’s ‘emotions’ living near the border while ‘casually’ inking the additional protocol to the Land Boundary Agreement in September 2011.
To ratify the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement along with the protocol signed in September 2011, India needs to amend its Constitution.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been sternly opposing the two deals saying they harm India’s interests.
Minister Quader expressed frustration at the opposition from Banerjee.
“We would not have been hurt that much if the opposition came from a Hindi-speaking state,” he said. “But the opposition came from a Bengali-speaking state in realising our just share,” Quader said referring to the two stalled deals.
He said the move from the West Bengal Chief Minister was ‘unexpected’.
Banerjee had reportedly shelved hydrologist Kalyan Rudra’s ‘preliminary’ report on the Teesta river.
Rudra reportedly observed that Teesta should be allowed to flow ‘as normally as possible’ into Bangladesh – or else it will dry up if too much of its waters are withdrawn upstream.
Analysts say the stiff opposition is in fact Banerjee’s attempts to bail out her cash-strapped state by making the Teesta treaty a bargaining point to make Delhi concede her financial demands.
She recently appointed her trusted aide and former Railway Minister Mukul Roy in charge of negotiations with the Indian external affairs ministry on the land boundary issue.
Referring to Banerjee, Quader said, “You call yourself a leader of the people and the land.
“We hope you would cordially assist the central [Indian] government in realising the just demands of millions of Bangalees (Bangladesh),” he said.
Source: Bd news24