India is focused on its bilateral relations with Bangladesh and there is no “unease” between Delhi and Dhaka, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said on Tuesday.
Speaking to media ahead of President Ram Nath Kovind’s December 15-17 visit to Dhaka for the Bangladesh’s Victory Day celebrations, Mr. Shringla tried to defuse the focus on October’s communal attacks in eastern and northern Bangladesh, and the recently imposed U.S. sanctions on Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). He said President Kovind’s visit is symbolically significant as it will mark the 50th anniversary of 1971 war which led to the defeat of Pakistan by the joint forces of India and Bangladesh on December 16.
“There is no unease in the relationship [between India and Bangladesh]. The relationship is an extraordinary one. It is based on ties of history, ties of culture, and bound by people to people ties, and cannot be replicated in other cases. Those ties are at a high point,” the Foreign Secretary said.
President Kovind’s visit to Bangladesh is the first foreign trip by the Indian President since the beginning of the pandemic. In Dhaka, he will be hosted by President Abdul Hamid. He will meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen will call on the Indian President during his stay in Dhaka.
However, it is unlikely that the Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) will get to meet the visiting Indian President. BNP leader and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia has been ailing, and a BNP delegation was expected to meet the Indian President, but sources said that this meeting will not take place as President Kovind is visiting as the head of the state of India and will hold only “official meetings”.
The joint December 16 celebration in Dhaka has come under a shadow since the U.S. Department of Treasury imposed sanctions on the RAB, Bangladesh’s anti-terror joint task force, for being complicit in human rights violations. Mr. Shringla refused to answer a question on the U.S. sanctions on the force, which will be in charge of security at vital locations in Bangladesh during President Kovind’s visit, but Mr. Momen said in Dhaka on Tuesday that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government would make an attempt to “change” the sanctions indirectly, indicating that the issue may come up for discussion during President Kovind’s three-day visit.
“Bangladesh is the central pillar of our ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy and it is also a relationship where this policy intersects with our ‘Act East’ policy,” Mr. Shringla declared.
He said the President’s three-day visit will be in the backdrop of the historic developments of 1971 that changed the map of South Asia. India was the second country to recognise Bangladesh.
Earlier, on December 6, a delegation comprising former Bangladesh Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu, and Sharmeen Ahmed, MP and daughter of the late Tajuddin Ahmed, leader of the Government of Bangladesh in exile, were hosted here to mark the ‘Maitri Divas’, which commemorates the day Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government recognised the Independence of Bangladesh in 1971.
President Kovind will be accompanied by a 122-member tri-service contingent that will march in Dhaka on December 16. This will be a reciprocation of a similar gesture by India during the last Republic Day events when a tri-service contingent from Bangladesh marched alongside the Indian military here. Both India and Bangladesh are holding several events to mark the ‘Vijay Parv’ to commemorate the victory of 1971, and India is hosting a delegation of 30 former ‘Mukti Joddhas’ or guerrilla fighters.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Bangladesh earlier this year to mark the birth centenary celebration of Mujibur Rahman, founder of Bangladesh, and the half century of India-Bangladesh ties.
India has extended an invitation to Prime Minister Hasina to visit, and sources indicated that the visit is likely to take place in the near future.
