Hasina's Visit to India: New date to be finalised soon

Dhaka and New Delhi are hopeful of negotiating new dates for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to India, India's Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar said   yesterday.

Replying to a question about the possibility of Hasina's visit to India, Akbar told a press conference in Delhi that when he had met Hasina in Dhaka in December last year, she had spoken “of certain scheduling problems.”

“She [Hasina] found that between the Victory Day [December 16] and the fog in Delhi,  the actual time would be very squeezed and she would not be able to do the things she wanted to do in Delhi and this included her dialogue [with Indian leadership] and a visit to Ajmer Sharif,” he said.

However, “we hope new dates for her visit will be negotiated very soon,” Akbar added.

In Dhaka, foreign ministry officials hinted that they were working for the visit which might take place in mid of February. An inter-ministerial meeting was held at the ministry on Tuesday, which discussed about the tentative dates for the visit as well as the agenda for summit level meeting, deals to be signed and other host of issues.

Hasina was to visit India in December last year but the event was postponed as the two countries could not agree on the dates. Hasina last visited India in January 2010 and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled to Dhaka in June 2015 when an agreement was signed to implement the landmark land boundary deal.

Asked about the prospects of Teesta river water-sharing issue being on the agenda of Hasina's talks with Modi during her proposed visit to Delhi, Akbar admitted “yes there are issues involved in the Teesta” but said negotiations were on between the Indian government and West Bengal government for working out a consensus.

“We are negotiating an internal consensus on the Teesta issue and we hope that there will be an agreement between the Centre and West Bengal government on it,” he remarked.

Akbar, who was accompanied by another Minister of State for External Affairs Gen (retd) VK Singh, said Teesta “is probably one of the few outstanding issues left between the two countries. The leaderships of the two countries have worked very hard to remove many of the obstacles in the bilateral relationship and one has to just look at what happened in the last two years.”

He said the people of India and Bangladesh have helped remove the obstacles with their spirit and so have prime ministers Modi and Hasina. “We are sure the spirit of Modi and Hasina will prevail,” Akbar added.