Dhaka, Delhi agree to strengthen cooperation on common rivers

Bangladesh and India on Sunday agreed to work closely to further deepen and strengthen cooperation on common rivers and water resources management.

They  also agreed to strengthen cooperation in IT and cybersecurity, renewable energy, agriculture and food security, sustainable trade, climate change and disaster management.

The seventh round of the Bangladesh-India Joint Consultative Commission (JCC) was held in New Delhi on Thursday.

The JCC was co-chaired by Foreign Minister  AK Abdul Momen and Indian External Affairs Minister  S Jaishankar.

Both sides reiterated the importance of the safe, speedy and sustainable return of the forcibly displaced persons from Myanmar's Rakhine, now being sheltered by Bangladesh, according to the joint media release issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Acknowledging the excellent bilateral ties shared by the two countries, both ministers reiterated the importance of closer cooperation to expeditiously implement their leaders' decisions and to further deepen and strengthen mutual engagement in all sectors of bilateral cooperation.

During his visit to New Delhi, Foreign Minister Momen will also pay a courtesy call on Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu and other dignitaries of the Indian government.

It was agreed that the eighth round of India-Bangladesh JCC will be held in Bangladesh in 2023.

Both ministers appreciated that in addition to the high-level visits, there have been intensive engagements through various bilateral mechanisms and agreed to further enhance partnership-building efforts with renewed vigour and regularity.

They tasked their officials to accelerate cooperation, with further attention paid to addressing issues and finding durable solutions for the mutual benefit of both peoples.

The ministers recalled the warmth shared by both sides, borne out of the shared sacrifices of the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh that forged close historical and friendly relations that transcend the traditional notion of a strategic partnership.

They welcomed the further strengthening of bilateral ties with the unprecedented visits by both the president and the prime minister of India to Bangladesh in 2021 to jointly commemorate three epochal events – the birth centenary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman; the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of Bangladesh and the golden anniversary of India-Bangladesh ties.

A role model for bilateral and regional cooperation, the ministers appreciated that the trust and mutual respect shared between the two countries only got stronger in the last decade.

A recent testimony of this was the launch of the trailer of "Mujib: The Making of a Nation," the jointly produced biopic on Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2022.

Noting that this was the first in-person JCC meeting convened since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the previous edition held virtually in 2020, the two ministers appreciated the efforts undertaken by both countries to jointly fight Covid.

They comprehensively reviewed all areas of ongoing cooperation, including the implementation of decisions taken during the visits of Indian President Ram Nath Kovind in December 2021 and of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March 2021, virtual summit between the prime ministers of the two countries in December 2020, as well as the last virtual meeting of JCC in September 2020.

The ministers expressed satisfaction that despite challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, both countries worked closer than ever before in every sector, from security and border management to mutually beneficial trade and investment flows, as well as enhanced bilateral and sub-regional multimodal connectivity, greater power and energy cooperation, developmental assistance and capacity building exchanges, cultural and closer people-to-people ties, reports UNB.