From water to visas to security—India-Bangladesh ties moved beyond Hasina |
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From water to visas to security—India-Bangladesh ties moved beyond Hasina
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman’s two-day visit to New Delhi this week, along with a high-powered delegation, is being hailed as a ‘major diplomatic breakthrough’.
After roughly a year and a half of strained ties between India and Bangladesh following the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government on 5 August 2024, New Delhi and Dhaka are trying to do business again.
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman’s two-day visit to New Delhi this week, along with a high-powered delegation, is being hailed as a “major diplomatic breakthrough that signals a rapid formalisation of ties between New Delhi and the newly elected government in Dhaka”.
“There is a sense of relief in New Delhi that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has come to power in the neighbouring country and not the largest Islamist political party—the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. Relations between the two countries got seriously strained during the tenure of the interim government under former chief advisor Muhammad Yunus,” Veena Sikri, Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh from 2003 to 2006, told ThePrint.
There is optimism in strategic circles in both New Delhi and Dhaka around Rahman’s visit, but a sense of caution as well. And then there is the Sheikh Hasina question.
The priority for Dhaka right now seems to be ‘reset’ — in energy, water, trade and visas. A source in the Bangladesh foreign ministry told ThePrint that the top items in Dhaka’s agenda are both practical and economic. At the top of the list is the Ganges water-sharing treaty, signed in 1996, which is set to expire in December this year.
Even when relations between Dhaka and New Delhi remained far from cordial during the Yunus regime, officials from the two countries interacted on common issues, including water sharing. “In February 2025,........