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How BJP’s Bengal win is shaping India-Bangladesh ties

New Delhi and Dhaka would do well not to let the BJP’s Bengal win become a roadblock to the mending of ties that are currently underway between the two neighbours.

What West Bengal does today may well shape how Dhaka deals with Delhi tomorrow. BJP’s big Bengal win, dethroning the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC, has ruffled feathers in Bangladesh. While there is hope about the Teesta water sharing agreement, the new West Bengal government’s take on beef, Islamic religious beliefs and barbed wires have heightened tensions between the two countries.

And these may well prove to be a roadblock to how diplomatic relations between Delhi and Dhaka progress from here on.

The Indo-Bangladesh Ganges Water Sharing Treaty, a landmark 30-year bilateral agreement between India and Bangladesh to share the dry-season flows of the Ganga at the Farakka Barrage in West Bengal, signed in 1996, is due to expire in December this year. The BNP government in Bangladesh has said that the country’s relations with India will depend on a new treaty and has sought immediate talks with Delhi.

“We want to send a clear message to the Indian government that a (new) treaty must be implemented immediately through discussions according to the expectations and needs of Bangladesh’s people,”........

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