B'deshis favour extending transit facilities to India: Poll

The countrywide poll, carried out by mass-circulated 'Prothom Alo' newspaper coinciding with the completion of two years of the tenure of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League, showed that 53 per cent respondents said Bangladesh would be benefited by offering the transit facilities to India.

"Thirty eight per cent people, however, think Bangladesh will lose if the facility is offered and nine per cent said they are not sure about the outcome of the transit facility," said the survey report published by the Alo.

Transit through Bangladesh for India was being seen as a sensitive issue here as main opposition BNP of ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia and its rightwing allies were opposed to the facility for "security and economic concerns."

BNP appears to have revived an old anti-transit campaign as the government is set to allow Indian transports to carry heavy equipment to its isolated northeastern states for a mega power plant through the country, signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in November last year.

"No foreign vehicle would be allowed to go through the country at the cost of the country's interests," Zia told a party rally two months ago, after Dhaka said it would charge India "transit fees" instead of "duties" in exchange of offering the transit facilities.

The Alo survey also showed that 72 per cent Bangladeshis believe that the ties with India have strengthened during the past two. Another opinion poll carried out by the Daily Star newspaper showed that the ruling Awami League government still enjoyed confidence of the majority population, who believed the country was heading in the right direction though its popularity declined to some extent in the past one year.

The Alo survey found 46 per cent of the people would vote for Awami League while 50 per cent of the the Star's respondents said Sheikh Hasina still enjoyed their approval as the prime minister.

But, several newspapers also reported that the government was losing its popularity, with Alo carrying a headline saying "the government's popularity is declining" while the another leading newspaper Samakal's main report's headline was "cloud grips sunny sky" as it reviewed the performance of the government.

The New Age in a front page report said the government stepped into the third year in office with hardly any headway in change of politics and governance that the Awami League promised in its electoral manifesto, Charter for Change, before the December 2008 general polls.

The Star report said when compared with the previous three polls, the latest one showed that the "popularity curves, on all counts, are on a declining trend, sharply in some respects."