India, Bangladesh ink landmark border pact

No deal on Teesta water sharing

But, the failure of the two countries to sign any deal on sharing of Teesta and Feni river waters cast a shadow on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s maiden visit here.

However, Singh who met his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina, said the two countries had decided to continue discussions to reach “a mutually acceptable, fair and amicable arrangement for the sharing of the Teesta and Feni river waters”.

Seeking to placate Dhaka, upset over the last-minute scrapping of the Teesta water-sharing pact, Singh announced a major trade sop allowing duty-free access with immediate effect to 61 items from Bangladesh to Indian market and permitting 24-hour access to Bangladeshis through Tin Bigha corridor. Of the 61 items, 46 are textile products for which Bangladesh had sought access into the Indian market.

Aware of Bangladesh’s sensitivities over the failure to reach an interim agreement on Teesta, Singh said “our common rivers need not be sources of discord, but can become the harbingers of prosperity to both our countries”.

The two sides were schedu­led to sign a pact on water sharing during Singh’s two-day visit, but strong objections by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over the draft of the agreement, led India to back off at the last minute.

“We have decided to continue discussions to reach a mutually acceptable, fair and amicable arrangement for the sharing of the Teesta and Feni river waters,” Singh said.

Earlier in the day,  the failure of inking the Teesta deal betrayed the rough edges in Indo-Bangladesh relations when Indian High Commissioner to Dhaka Rajeev Mitter was summoned by Bangladesh Foreign Ministry who conveyed Dhaka’s sense of deep disappointment and frustration.

Mitter, for his part, made it clear that the Teesta agreement could not be inked as “internal discussions” in India on the issue were yet to be completed.

Once the internal discussion is completed, the Teesta accord would be signed as early as possible, the Indian envoy conveyed to Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Mijarul Qayes this morning shortly before the arrival of Singh, who is the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Bangladesh after Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999.

Under the agreement protocol on land boundary agreement signed by Foreign Ministers S M Krishna and Dipu Moni in the presence of the two Prime Ministers, the two countries demarcated the entire land boundary and resolved the status of enclaves and adversely possessed areas.

India and Bangladesh share a 4,096 km land boundary covering five states—West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram.

The agreement on swap of 111 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh and 51 Ban­gladeshi enclaves, where an approximately 51,000 people have been living for centuries, fulfills a vision laid out by the Indira-Mujib pact of 1974.

Non-resolution of the enclaves had plagued the India-Bangladesh ties for decades and the agreement signed today was the most important event of Singh’s visit.

This is for the second time time since 1974 that India has agreed to give up some part of its territory to another country. India had earlier ceded the island of Kachhateevu to Sri Lanka.

In all, the two countries signed ten agreements relating to a Framework of Agreement on Cooperation and Development signed by the two Prime Ministers, protocol on land boundary agreement, renewable energy and overland transit to Nepal. The other agreements which were inked were on preservation of the Sundarbands, conservation of Royal Bengal tiger, fisheries and livestock, audiovisual media, cooperation between Dhaka University and Jawaharlal Nehru University and Institutes of Fashion Technology in both the countries.

In a statement to the media after the signing of the agreements, Singh described the deals as a “new architecture for our partnership which will open new vistas of bilateral cooperation, strengthen regional cooperation within South Asia and set an example of good neighbourly relations”.

Singh said relations between India and Bangladesh enjoy “our highest priority and there is a national consensus in India that India must develop the best possible relations with Bangladesh.”

Singh said he and Hasina have had “very wide-ranging and in-depth discussions which have built upon the momentum of the Bangladesh Prime Minister’s historic visit to India in 2010.”

Conveying India’s “deep appreciation” to Hasina for the cooperation rendered by Bangladesh in “our joint fight against terrorism and insurgency”, Singh said “this has brought much needed stability to both of us and to this region as a whole.”