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BNP seeks Indian envoy’s removal

DHAKA: In an unusual move, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has demanded the “immediate withdrawal” of Indian High Commissioner Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty for “meddling in the nation’s internal affairs.”

“We want his immediate withdrawal as he has been making comments for long violating the diplomatic norms,” the Opposition chief whip in Parliament, Zainul Abdin Farroque, said at a briefing organised on behalf of the parliamentary party of the BNP on Tuesday.

The envoy’s statements would “damage relations” between the two countries, said Mr. Farroque.

The party, however, did not clarify with whom it had raised the demand: New Delhi or Dhaka.

The BNP found Mr. Chakravarty’s remarks on the Tipaimukh dam “audacious” and claimed they amounted to “violating diplomatic norms and interfering in the country’s internal affairs.”

The envoy, speaking at a seminar here on June 21, defended New Delhi’s position amid a barrage of anti-Indian criticism over the construction of the dam, and claimed India had consulted Bangladesh at all relevant levels on the issue.

Even as the BNP and its allies sought to go to international forums to prevent India from constructing the dam, he explained that there was no international law that could prevent India from implementing the project.

The BNP alleged that Mr. Chakravarty called the Bangladeshi water experts who opposed the Tipaimukh project ‘so-called experts.’ Begum Khaleda’s party also remarked that the envoy’s “behaviour and attitude have become insolent after the present government came to power (in Bangladesh).”

The government on Tuesday appointed Ahmed Tariq Karim as the new High Commissioner to India.

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