Under the project, a 950-km pipeline will be built from Myanmar to carry its natural gas to India through Bangladesh territory.

An inter-ministerial meeting on May 16 had decided that after examining different issues linked with the proposed tri-nation gas pipeline project, the commerce, power, home and foreign ministries would prepare their reports and send those to the energy ministry within a week.

The four ministries had also been asked to clarify their views on the three conditions set by Bangladesh for India to agree before signing the project agreement.

The conditions are allowing Bangladesh to import electricity from Nepal and Bhutan through Indian territory, allowing Bangladesh to export goods to the two landlocked Himalayan kingdoms through Indian corridors and reducing trade imbalance between Bangladesh and India.

The deadline for submission of the reports of the relevant ministries expired on May 23, but none of them sent any reports to the energy ministry.

State Minister for Energy AKM Mosharraf Hossain yesterday told reporters that his ministry would proceed with the issue on the basis of the proceedings of the earlier meeting.

"It is unfortunate…none of the line ministries has submitted any report to the energy ministry on the issue", he said.

He said the next inter-ministerial meeting will be held sometime in the middle of this month after his return from a week-long tour abroad.

Earlier on January 13, Bangladesh, India and Myanmar had signed a joint statement at a ministerial meeting in Yangon to go ahead with the proposed pipeline project.

At that time, India had reportedly agreed to accept all the three conditions set by Bangladesh for a swap.

Later, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was due to be signed by the three nations on February 25 in Dhaka. But Bangladesh deferred the schedule, saying that it was not prepared to sign the MoU.