After the historic signing of the Land Boundary Agreement between both countries, ties between India and Bangladesh seem to have hit a rough patch over sharing of waters of the Teesta river.

Bangladesh has for long been urging India to bring the West Bengal government on board in order to the sign the Teesta water-sharing agreement, but the Modi-led government has not been able to make much headway in this regard.

As a result, the visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has got deferred again. She was scheduled to visit in December, but due to the ongoing spat between the Centre and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over the issue of demonetisation, the matter was not discussed with the State government.

Thereafter, it was decided that Hasina would visit India by February-end which was also eventually cancelled. However, it has now been decided that the Bangladesh Prim Minister will be visiting India in early April.

“Teesta continues to be a priority for Bangladesh and it is expected that some progress on an agreement will be made before the visit takes place,” sources told BusinessLine .

Sources said the Centre had not yet been able to discuss the issue with the West Bengal government but was hopeful that it would be taken up in the “coming months”, as the issue of demonetisation is believed to have sorted out.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar had recently met Hasina to firm up the agenda of her visit. This will be followed up by another delegation from India which will visit Bangladesh next month.

The Teesta pact has been under discussion since 1983, and was almost finalised in 2011 when it was agreed that India would use 42.5 per cent and Bangladesh 38 per cent of Teesta water.

But the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was unable to sign the pact due to stiff opposition from Banerjee, who was to accompany Singh to Dhaka, but cancelled her visit at the eleventh hour.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited Bangladesh last year as part of his ‘Neighbourhood First” policy. At that time, he had assured Hasina of discussing the Teesta issue. He had also promised her that construction of dams and reservoirs on both sides of the border would also be discussed as part of the water security arrangement of 54 rivers. Bangladesh has a total of 230 rivers, out of which 54 flow through India.

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