Despite the recent controversy over Bangladesh’s citizenship law and the National Citizenship Register, West Bengal’s popular regional spots with Siliguri and Darjeeling, It has decided to start direct road connectivity under the Bengal Regional Cooperation Initiative from Thursday.
The move will boost India’s Indo-Pacific vision in regional connectivity networks. A meeting will be held recently on regional connectivity in the Road Transport and Highways Division of the Government of Bangladesh, and then decide on it and start work on it.
The meeting underscored Dhaka’s interest in opening a direct road network between Bangladesh and India at the earliest. Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) Motor Vehicle Agreement (MVA) has been delayed due to Bhutan’s temporary withdrawal from BBN.
The Bangladesh government told ET over Dhaka over phone, ‘We are also planning to start the Dhaka-Siliguri-Gangtok (Sikkim) -Dhaka and Dhaka-Siliguri-Darjeeling-Dhaka bus routes. .
Although road connectivity already exists between Bangladesh and India, it is not connected to Bangladesh but not direct, in which passengers have to change buses on the border. The official said that under the new initiative, passengers will not have to change buses.
BBIN countries signed the Motor Vehicle Agreement on 15 June 2015 for free movement of goods and passengers between the four countries.
Under the agreement, the contracting parties will allow trucks and passenger vehicles to be rented – or individually – to ply the area of other contracting parties.
Last year during the NAM Summit in the Azerbaijan city of Baku, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina spoke with her Nepali counterpart KP Sharma Oli. Where he decided to go ahead with Bhutan with an open road network project.
Meanwhile, during her recent visit to New Delhi, Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi discussed working on the bilateral India-Bangladesh Motor Vehicles Agreement.
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