India’s President Pranab Mukherjee meets Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka. Mukherjee is the first Indian president to visit Bangladesh in nearly four decades.

Agencies/Dhaka

With India failing to ink the Teesta river water-sharing deal and land boundary agreement with Bangladesh due to internal differences, visiting President Pranab Mukherjee yesterday underlined the need for building consensus on the two key issues to improve ties with Dhaka.

Mukherjee said over the years India has “developed broad consensus across the political spectrum” on foreign policy issues. “In a democracy we have divergence of views on many issues but there are some areas where there is a consensus and developing good relations with Bangladesh is one such area on which there is consensus”.

Mukherjee, who was interacting with the Indian community in Bangladesh at a function, said the relationship with Bangladesh is steady and moving forward and the two countries “are sincerely trying to resolve the issues of demarcation of land boundary and sharing of river waters”.

Earlier in the day, in his speech after accepting an honorary doctorate degree of law from Dhaka University, he said the Indian government proposes to introduce a constitution amendment bill in the parliament to give effect the land boundary agreement and arriving at an early accord on the sharing of Teesta waters.

The Indian president’s remarks on Teesta and land boundary agreement came after the issues were raised by Jatiya Party chief and former Bangladesh president H M Ershad who called on him
yesterday.

Ershad is understood to have conveyed to Mukherjee that signing of the Teesta deal would help Bangladesh in a great way. The issues were also brought up by Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during her meeting with Mukherjee.