Mamata meets with... Indian PM

Hours after his arrival in Dhaka on Saturday morning, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended a conversation with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee before his meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Mamata Banerjee visited Modi at the Sonargaon hotel where he is staying in Dhaka at about 3:00pm on Saturday. After the meeting they will leave for the function to sign the land boundary agreement at the Hasina’s office.

This is Mamata’s second meeting with Modi in less than a month. The two leaders met last month when the Prime Minister visited Kolkata and Asansol.

The two had earlier met in Delhi on 9 March when Mamata Banerjee visited Delhi seeking a waiver of the huge debt her government is burdened with.

Mamata arrived in Dhaka on Friday, a day ahead of Modi’s two day visit to Bangladesh. Soon after her arrival, the prime minister telephoned Banerjee to welcome her.

The West Bengal chief is scheduled to participate in two functions— the flagging off of the Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala bus service and the signing of the Land Boundary Agreement—and leave for Kolkata in the evening.

The West Bengal Chief Minister reportedly stood in the way of inking of a crucial deal over sharing of the common Teesta River at the last minute during former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Dhaka tour in 2011.

Ahead of Modi’s Bangladesh tour, India made it clear that the Teesta deal would not be signed during his visit this time as India was yet to reach an internal consensus on the matter.