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 on Monday underlined the need for building consensus on the two key issues to improve ties with Dhaka.
Choosing to speak in front of legisaltors who included BJP’s Chandan Mitra and Trinamul Congress’ Mukul Roy who disagree with the Centre’s decision to pass the land boundary agreement and share the waters of Teesta, Mr Mukherjee said over the years India has “developed broad consensus across the political spectrum” on foreign policy issues.
He said “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”.
Mr Mukherjee, who was interacting with the Indian community in Bangladesh, 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 his speech after accepting an honorary 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 deal and arriving at an early accord on the sharing of Teesta waters. — PTI