Modi lands in Dhaka, his first foreign tour after lockdown

  Dhaka, March 26: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday kicked off his first foreign tour a year after he declared the Covid-19 lockdo...

 

Dhaka, March 26: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday kicked off his first foreign tour a year after he declared the Covid-19 lockdown. He will be in Bangladesh till tomorrow to attend the celebration of the country's 50th year of liberation from Pakistan and the centenary year of its founder Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, PM Sheikh Hasina's father. The two countries are also celebrating 50 years of the establishment of diplomatic ties.

He was received at the Dhaka airport by the PM Sheikh Hasina. Paying tributes at the National Martyr's Memorial in Savar, he tweeted: "The courage of those who took part in the Liberation War of Bangladesh motivates many."

He later engaged with opposition leaders of the country and discussed a wide gamut of issues on the two countries' bilateral ties.

Earlier yesterday, PM Modi had expressed his happiness over his first foreign visit since the Covid-19 lockdown in India to a "friendly neighbouring country" with which India shares deep cultural, linguistic and people-to-people ties.

"My visit will not only be an occasion to convey appreciation for Bangladesh's remarkable economic and developmental strides under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visionary leadership, but also to commit India's abiding support for these achievements," he said in a statement.

Recalling the nation's founder, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, in a write-up for Bangladeshi newspaper ‘The Daily Star’, the Prime Minister wrote that had the late leader not been assassinated in 1975, Bangladesh and the region would have evolved along a very different trajectory.

"India and Bangladesh were able to finally overcome the complications of history through the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement...But had Bangabandhu been at the helm longer, this achievement may have come much earlier," PM Modi wrote in the article.

"We could have built a closely integrated economic region, with deeply interlinked value-chains spanning food processing to light industry, electronics and technology products to advanced materials," he wrote, recommitting himself to the "vision set out by Bangabandhu". (Agencies)