JOIN USPM may nudge Trinamool chief on Teesta deal
Jittery over Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee’s growing penchant to pick up a fight with the Centre, the Congress-led UPA government is treading cautiously on ratifying the India-Bangladesh land deal that was struck during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Dhaka last year.
Singh is expected to seek West Bengal Chief Minister’s consent for ratification of the deal, when the latter meets him in New Delhi on Wednesday.
The Union Cabinet has put on hold approval to the Constitution Amendment Bill required for ratification of the deal with Bangladesh, as the prime minister is understood to have insisted on holding consultations with Mamata.
Singh is also likely to nudge Banerjee to help expedite the process of resolving differences between the Centre and West Bengal on the issue of interim India-Bangladesh agreement for sharing of water of common river Teesta.
They are also expected to discuss the issue of repairing the broken sluice gates of Farakka Barrage on the Ganges river in West Bengal. Banerjee of late alleged that the broken sluice gates resulted in outflow of more water to Bangladesh than the neighbouring country was entitled to as per the Ganges Water Treaty, which Delhi and Dhaka signed in 1996.
Mamata had earlier put spanner in Singh’s much-promising visit to Bangladesh in September 2011. She had opted out of Prime Minister’s entourage to Dhaka just a few days before the visit – purportedly because she had not been happy with the interim agreement that India and Bangladesh had planned to ink for sharing of water of Teesta.
The deal has since been on hold as Mamata’s government assigned international river expert Kalyan Rudra to assess the quantum of water India could share with Bangladesh without any adverse impact on irrigation and power projects in northern region of West Bengal.
Rudra last week met Mamata in Kolkata and is understood to have sought more time to conduct the study. Though West Bengal Chief Minister apparently agreed to give him more time, New Delhi is worried over the delay, as it could severely hit its ties with Dhaka. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina too invested much political capital on the proposed deal on Teesta.
The meeting between Singh and Mamata on Wednesday is going to be the first between the two after the fiasco over the deal on Teesta.
The protocol to the India-Bangladesh land boundary agreement of 1974 was inked during Singh’s visit to Dhaka on September 6 and 7 last. The protocol seeks to resolve the long-pending disputes over the land boundary between the two neighbours in the un-demarcated stretches and exchange of enclaves and territories in adverse possession. The implementation of the protocol will result in the exchange of 111 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh with 51 Bangladesh enclaves in India and preserve status quo on territories in adverse possession.
Though West Bengal Government had earlier given its consent to the deal, experiences with Mamata over the deal on Teesta prompted Singh to take a cautious approach towards ratifying it.
What has also made it difficult for the Union government to seek passage of the Constitution Amendment Bill required for ratifying the protocol is that the BJP too opposed the swap-deal, although its protest against it was so far limited to Assam.
The government would need two-third majority in both the Houses to get the Bill passed. But at present it has a wafer-thin majority in the Lok Sabha and does not have adequate numbers in the Rajya Sabha.