India will send 10 locomotives to strengthen ties with B’desh
THE HANDOVER OF THE BROAD GAUGE DIESEL LOCOMOTIVES IS IN LINE WITH A COMMITMENT BY NEW DELHI DURING BANGLADESH PM SHEIKH HASINA’S VISIT LAST OCTOBER
NEWDELHI:INDIA will hand over 10 railway locomotives to Bangladesh on Monday, reflecting a renewed focus on the “neighbourhood first” policy to bolster economic ties and connectivity within the region amid the border standoff with China.
The handover of the broad gauge diesel locomotives, part of grant assistance from the Indian side, is in line with a commitment by New Delhi during Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit last October, people familiar with the development said on condition of anonymity.
The locomotives will be handed over during a virtual event to be joined by external affairs minister S Jaishankar and railways minister Piyush Goyal and their Bangladeshi counterparts AK Abdul Momen and Mohammed Nurul Islam Sujon, as well as envoys of the two countries and senior officials.
The handover will come close on the heels of the first cross-border container train reaching Bangladesh on Sunday with 50 containers of FMCG goods and fabrics.
Last week, the two sides marked a notable achievement in maritime connectivity with the first shipment of container cargo from Kolkata to Agartala in the landlocked northeastern region via Bangladesh’s Chattogram port. The connectivity initiatives with Bangladesh coincide with other moves by India to shore up relations with key neighbours amid the standoff with China. In recent weeks, New Delhi has kept a wary eye on stepped up activities by Beijing in regional capitals such as Kathmandu, Male and Colombo. The people cited above believe China was behind Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s recent outreach to his Bangladeshi counterpart.
The people said India-bangladesh railway cooperation is a vital element of efforts to promote trade and connectivity. Both sides are working to enhance rail connectivity by developing new projects and restoring old links. Currently, the four operational rail links between the two sides, all of which originate in West Bengal, are Petrapole-benapole, Gede-darshana, Singhabad-rohanpur, and Radhikapur–birol.
The first container train that reached Bangladesh on Sunday left the Container Corporation of
India Ltd’s (CONCOR) terminal at Majerhat near Kolkata on Friday and crossed over using the Benapole-petrapole link.
This container train will now be a regular service connecting CONCOR terminals in India to stations in Bangladesh such as Benapole, Jessore, Singia, Noapara and Bangabandhu Setu West, Indian officials said. The two sides signed an MOU for the service in April 2017 and a trial run was conducted in April 2018.
Experts believe the attention given to ties with Bangladesh is part of efforts to overcome the impact of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) on bilateral relations. Bangladesh’s leadership was irked by reports that illegal migrants in states such as Assam would be deported to the neighbouring country.
Maya Mirchandani, senior fellow at Observer Research Foundation and professor of media studies at Ashoka University, said: “We’ve neglected the neighbourhood for some time. Bangladesh has been upset since CAA was passed, and the perception it has created about ethnic Bengali Muslims in particular.”
“In the current context, with Chinese adventurism on India’s borders, it is imperative for Delhi to be less dismissive of neighbours falling into China’s ‘debt trap’ and be more pro-active about repairing ties that have been starved for attention,” she added.