Mokarram Hossain :Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj arrives in Dhaka tonight on a three-day visit from June 25-27 during which she is expected to make fresh proposals for road and railway transit through Bangladesh and increasing the service frequency of Maitree Express for boosting bilateral trade and cultural ties between the two neighbours.Sushma Swaraj, who will land at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 10.30 on Wednesday night, will table the connectivity plans during her bilateral meeting with Foreign Minister A H Mahmood Ali at the Foreign Ministry at 9:30am the next day (Thursday), Foreign Office sources said yesterday. Under the new proposals, the road and railway transit routes would be Kolkata-Agartala and Kolkata-New Jalpaiguri through Bangladesh. Currently, the Dhaka-Kolkata bus service has been running since 1999, while the Dhaka-Agartala bus service since 2001, added the sources.She will be the first senior Indian minister to travel to Dhaka since the change of government in India and is expected to meet President Abdul Hamid, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Bangladeshi counterpart A H Mahmood Ali on Thursday.Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Dhaka is part of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s outreach to India’s neighbouring countries as was evident in the invites sent to top SAARC leaders to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the Indian Prime Minister in New Delhi on May 26.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was among the first foreign leaders to felicitate Nadendra Modi on his and BJP’s emphatic victory in Lok Sabha elections and had urged him to make Bangladesh as the first foreign destination for an official visit. Sources at the Foreign Ministry said Dhaka will raise various issues with the Indian delegation, but the ratification of Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) and signing of the Teesta water sharing deal will come up prominently.On the other hand, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to have better access to the northeast of the country and for this, it wants to introduce road and rail links between Tripura and Mizoram using Bangladesh as a transit route.Meanwhile, sources said though BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia is not holding any official position, Sushma Swaraj likely to meet the former prime minister as the BJP government wants to put importance on maintaining relations with the BNP considering future elections in Bangladesh.During the tenure of previous Manmohan Singh’s government, Dhaka and New Delhi initiated talks on plying commercial vehicles through Bangladesh. But the issue could not make much progress following India’s failure to many any agreement on the Teesta water sharing deal and ratification of the LBA.The proposed deal on Teesta water-sharing was held up by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in September, 2011 when she opposed it at the eleventh hour and pulled out of Manmohan Singh’s entourage to Dhaka on an official visit.Besides, Sushma Swaraj will also have engagement with leaders of various think tanks, chambers of commerce and industry and cultural organizations on Thursday.She will also deliver a lecture on Bangladesh-India relations at an event to be organised by the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) in the evening.The Indian external affairs minister will attend a press briefing at Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel at 4:30pm the same day.Meanwhile in a significant move, Dhaka has decided to allow Delhi to transport food grains to the landlocked north-eastern states of India using Bangladesh’s territory and infrastructure. And India won’t have to pay any charges for this transit facility. Official sources said, following requests from the Indian government, Dhaka has agreed to transport 10,000 tonnes of food grains as relief material for Tripura through its river and road territory under a special transit facility in the first phase. The Food Corporation of India will send rice and wheat from Andhra Pradesh to Tripura using the Ashuganj river port in eastern Bangladesh and the roadways leading to the state. In 2012, Bangladesh allowed India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation to ferry heavy machinery, turbines and cargo through Ashuganj for the 726MW Palatana power project in southern Tripura. It is to be noted that on May 27, the new Indian Prime Minister assured Bangladesh of looking into two long-pending issues — Teesta water sharing deal and Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) — when Speaker Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury met him at Hyderabad House, in New Delhi after the swearing-in ceremony of Mr Modi.Meanwhile, Sushma Swaraj on Monday asked Indian envoys based in seven SAARC countries, China, Central Asian Republics, Iran and Myanmar to follow up on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiative to expand engagement with Delhi’s neighbours through a concrete action plan. Her meeting with the envoys which lasted several hours was a follow-up of Mr Modi’s meeting with leaders of SAARC countries last month. Diplomatic sources said Indian home ministry has rejected the external affairs ministry’s proposal to grant visa-on-arrival facility to Bangladeshi nationals and visa-free entry to its citizens under the age of 18 and over 65 as the later had asked the former to give its opinion on the inclusion of the two issues as part of the tentative agenda of discussions during Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Bangladesh. However, the home ministry did not completely rule out another proposal by the external affairs ministry of long-term multiple entry tourist visas for Bangladeshis under 18 and over 65. Currently, Bangladeshis get multiple-entry visa for one year and the proposal is for five years.
