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Delhi to press for rail, road transit

Connectivity to top agenda during Sushma's visit

Rezaul Karim
India is expected to make fresh proposals for road and railway transit through Bangladesh and increasing the service frequency of Maitree Express for boosting bilateral trade and cultural ties.
Linder the new proposals, the road and railway transit routes would be Kolkata-Agartala and Kolkata-New Jalpaiguri through Bangladesh, said diplomatic sources.
Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who is likely to visit Dhaka at the end of this month, will table the connectivity plans during her meetings with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali.
New Delhi also mulls offering visa-on-arrival facility for the Maitree Express passengers, mentioned the sources.
Officials at the foreign ministry said Dhaka will also raise various issues with the Indian delegation, but the ratification of Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) and signing of the Teesta water sharing deal will come up prominently.
According to Indian diplomats, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to have better access to the northeast and for this, it wants to introduce road and rail links between Tripura and Mizoram using Bangladesh as a transit route.
On the Maitree Express, official sources said the train now operates twice a week, but India wants to make it thrice a week. In future the train could run every day.
According to railway sources, the Maitree Express had over 80 percent occupancy in the last three months. The train, which was introduced in 2008, takes over 10 hours to reach Dhaka after customs and immigration formalities at Gede in India and Darshana in Bangladesh.
The Dhaka-Kolkata bus service has been running since 1999, while the Dhaka-Agartala bus service since 2001.
The Maitree Express under the Indian railways leaves Kolkata on Tuesday and returns from Dhaka the following day. From Bangladesh, the train leaves Dhaka on Friday and departs Kolkata the following day.
According to a report run by the Times of India yesterday, Indian foreign officials are ready to discuss agendas including extending the route of Maitree Express from Dhaka to Chittagong.
For connecting North Bengal to Kolkata via Bangladesh, the option of using an old route via Hardinge Bridge on the river Padma will be discussed. The new route can be from Kolkata to Ranaghat and then through Bangladesh up to Hili, from where passengers will travel to New Jalpaiguri, the report added.
Meanwhile, sources said though BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia is not holding any official position, Sushma Swaraj might meet the former prime minister as the BJP government wants to put importance on maintaining relations with the BNP considering future elections in Bangladesh.
During the tenure of Manmohan Singh’s government, Dhaka and New Delhi initiated talks on plying commercial vehicles through Bangladesh. But the issue could not make much progress following India's failure to ink the Teesta water sharing deal and ratification of the LBA.