Returning from China, Hasina says India will develop the Teesta project

New Delhi: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said she prefers that India completes the Teesta river basin development project, since Bangladesh has problems with India over sharing the waters of this river. On her return from an official visit to China, PM Hasina on Sunday told the media in an interaction at her official residence, “They (India) will give us whatever we need after completion of the Teesta project.”

The Premier said both China and India have given proposals to implement the Teesta Basin Development Project and they will both conduct feasibility studies separately.

“We will go for the proposal which will be suitable for us after seeing their feasibility studies,” she said. At the same time, she made it quite clear that Bangladesh prefers India to complete the ‘Teesta rejuvenation’ project. She said that “it is India which has created problems for sharing the river waters with Bangladesh. If they send a technical team and study the project, a final resolution of the Teesta river problem would be possible.”

The Bangladesh Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud was in New Delhi recently to attend a Retreat of the foreign ministers of BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) countries. During his visit, Mahmud met Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and discussed the issue of sending a technical team for the conservation and management of the Teesta River Basin. The decision to do so had earlier been taken at the summit meeting between Bangladesh PM Hasina and Indian PM Narendra Modi.

Responding to criticism that Bangladesh got nothing from her China visit, PM Hasina outlined the outcomes of the visit, while denying that her visit had been cut short, saying, “All my official programs were over, so I came back a few hours before the scheduled time,” mentioning her daughter’s illness as a factor.

She said during her visit to Beijing, she met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and held a detailed bilateral meeting with her Chinese counterpart Li Qiang at the Great Hall of the People. After the delegation level bilateral meeting on July 10, Bangladesh and China signed and renewed 21 cooperation documents, mostly MoUs, eyeing stronger development and economic cooperation between the two Asian countries, she said. Bangladesh and China also announced seven outcome agreements, she added.

In the bilateral meeting with President Xi, China agreed to provide assistance amounting to US$ 2 billion to Bangladesh. They also agreed that China would build the 9th Bangladesh-China Friendship Bridge, saying, “Are these things nothing?”

How could they (her critics and political opponents) overlook such massive projects that the Awami League government has done for the development of Bangladesh, she asked, adding that she had become habituated to hearing such criticism. However, her government would continue to forge ahead with projects to develop Bangladesh.

INDIA NEWS STREAM