India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks with Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Credit: Reuters Photo
New Delhi: Dhaka has conveyed to New Delhi its displeasure over West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s recent statement on opening up the doors of India’s eastern state for the distressed people fleeing the unrest in Bangladesh.
The comment by the West Bengal chief minister could create confusion and mislead people, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government in Dhaka conveyed to New Delhi.
The Trinamool Congress supremo already drew flak for her comment from both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Union government led by it.
“With due respect to (West Bengal) Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, I would like to say, we have excellent relations with her. We have deep relations,” said Mohammed Hasan Mahmud, the foreign minister of Bangladesh. “But her remarks created confusion to some extent, and there is scope to be misled,” he said while talking to journalists in Dhaka.
“I should not be speaking on the affairs of Bangladesh since that it is a sovereign nation and whatever needs to be said on the issue is a subject matter of the Centre. But what I can tell you is that if helpless people knock on the doors of West Bengal, we will surely provide them with shelter,” Banerjee had said at the mega rally the Trinamool Congress held on the occasion of its ‘Martyrs’ Day’ in Kolkata on July 21.
The TMC supremo had also cited the resolution of the United Nations to justify her offer of shelter for the people fleeing unrest in Bangladesh, where a massive agitation by the students protesting against reservation in government jobs and the police crackdown on them had resulted in the death of at least 114 people with many others being injured
“We have given a note to the Government of India on this issue (on the comment by the West Bengal chief minister),” said Mahmud, the foreign minister of Bangladesh.
Banerjee's comment appeared to be an attempt by her to counter the criticism by the leaders of the ruling Awami League and others in Bangladesh, accusing her of stalling India’s proposed deals with the neighbouring country for the sharing of water of the common rivers. She sought to strike the right chord with the protesters in Bangladesh, by offering shelter in her state for the people in distress fleeing the unrest and police crackdown in the neighbouring country.
The attempts by New Delhi and Dhaka to clinch a deal for the sharing of water of trans-boundary river Teesta could not succeed, as the TMC government in Kolkata stalled it, arguing that such a pact between India and Bangladesh would deprive the farmers of the northern region of West Bengal of water.
Hasina’s Awami League has been holding Banerjee responsible for the delay in clinching the deal. The TMC supremo recently also protested against New Delhi’s move to start negotiations with Dhaka for renewing the 1996 India-Bangladesh agreement for the sharing of the water of the Ganges.
“These are matters which are handled by the Union government. A State government has no locus standi on the issue and as such their comments are totally misplaced,” a source in the Union government had said in a tacit reaction to the comment by the chief minister of West Bengal.