K'taka to connect with sister province

Neighbourly talks: India, China sign several deals across the board

India and China on Friday inked an agreement to establish a sisterly relation between Karnataka and Sichuan province in the South-West region of the communist country.

The agreement, which was inked after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with China’s Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing, made Karnataka and Sichuan the second pairs of an Indian state and a Chinese province to have sister-state or sister-province relation.

A sisterly relation between Gujarat and Guangdong on South China Sea coast was earlier established with an agreement inked during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to New Delhi in September 2014.

Apart from the agreement for sisterly relation between Karnataka and China’s Sichuan province, Modi-Li meeting was also followed by signing of the deals for establishing similar ties between Aurangabad and Dunhuang, Chennai and Chongqing and Hyderabad and Qingdao.

Sources in New Delhi said that since Sichuan was a hub of high technology industry in China, the two governments decided to have a sisterly relation between the province and Karnataka, the IT capital of India.

A sister city relation between Chengdu of Sichuan and Bengaluru was established in 2013. Indian IT giant Wipro, which is headquartered in Bengaluru, has established its Strategic R&D Centre in Chengdu with a focused research on mobile phone operating system. Chinese high-tech company Huawei, too, established its biggest overseas R&D centre in Bengaluru.

Though Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was invited to accompany the prime minister to China, he opted out and later told mediapersons that he decided not to leave the state in view of the panchayat polls.

Modi and Li on Friday also reviewed the projects for increasing the speed of trains on the existing Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysuru line and redevelopment of Baiyappanahalli Railway Station.