Bangladesh hopes for Teesta water agreement soon

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wednesday expressed hope for an amicable solution to distribution of Teesta River waters between India and Bangladesh soon. Hasina was on a brief visit to the Tinbigha corridor in Mekhliganj sub-division of Cooch Behar district of West Bengal, accompanied by former Bangladesh President H M Ershad. The premier's visit was the first after an historic land boundary agreement was signed between the two countries during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to that country, resolving a decades-old dispute over exchange of adversely-held enclaves. Prime Minister Hasina hoped the enclave problems would be solved amicably and thanked the Indian government for making the Tinbigha corridor accessible to Bangladesh nationals for 24 hours. 'This facility bailed out the Bangla people from confinement,' she said. An agreement on the distribution of Teesta waters during Singh's visit to Bangladesh was stalled at the eleventh hour after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee opted out of the PM's delegation to the neighbouring country. During Hasina's short visit, she planted a few saplings to mark the friendship between India and Bangladesh. The Tinbigha corridor was handed over to Bangladesh to allow the Bangla people to get connected by road between two Bangla enclaves named Dahagram and Angarpota with Patgram in mainland of Bangladesh. Ms. Hasina promised that her government would 'remove problems related to exchange of the enclaves that were not done during the past 64 years'. Union ministers Gulam Nabi Azad and Jitendra Prasad Singh welcomed Hasina at Tinbigha on behalf of the Indian government. The BSF had arranged foolproof security arrangement to make the Bangladesh Premier's visit trouble-free. At Dahagram, surrounded by Indian territory, where PM Hasina arrived by a helicopter, she inaugurated a primary health centre, a Union Parishad building and a power station.