Bimstec Summit 2025: Will PM Modi meet Bangladesh’s Yunus in Bangkok?

After the Ministry of Exterior Affairs (MEA) confirmed days in the past that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take part within the BIMSTEC Summit in Thailand, there was hypothesis over the prime minister’s potential assembly with Bangladesh interim authorities’s Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus.

Dhaka has been attempting exhausting to rearrange a standalone assembly between PM Modi and Yunus in Bangkok this week. Nonetheless, there was no phrase but from New Delhi on the potential engagement, Instances of India reported on Monday.

The alerts rising from Dhaka point out that the interim regime is extraordinarily eager for the assembly which it claims can put ties again on monitor.

In keeping with a Information 18 report, citing extremely positioned sources, no bilateral assembly has been scheduled between the 2 leaders.

Yunus just lately visited China the place he despatched a message to India by saying a sequence of agreements. He went as far as to say that Bangladesh alone might present entry to the ocean for India’s northeastern states.

Yunus inspired Beijing to develop its financial affect in Bangladesh, controversially suggesting that the landlocked standing of India’s northeastern states might current a chance.

His remarks, reportedly made throughout a four-day go to to China, started circulating on social media on Monday.

Yunus, who met President Xi Jinping and signed 9 agreements through the journey, mentioned, “The seven states of India, the jap a part of India, are known as the seven sisters. They’re a landlocked area of India. They haven’t any approach to attain out to the ocean.”

Calling Bangladesh because the “solely guardian of the ocean” within the area, he mentioned this may very well be an enormous alternative and may very well be an extension of the Chinese language economic system.

Amid all this, PM Modi greeted Yunus and the nation’s folks on the event of Eid-ul-Fitr on Monday, searching for stronger friendship between the 2 international locations.

“Could the bonds of friendship amongst our international locations develop stronger,” PM Modi mentioned in his message, which was shared by the chief adviser’s press wing.

PM Modi mentioned because the blessed month of Ramzan involves a detailed, “I take this second to increase heat greetings and felicitations to you and the folks of Bangladesh on the joyous event of the pageant of Eid al-Fitr”.

In keeping with Information 18, the Bangladeshi chief has been searching for a gathering with PM Modi for the previous few months however on the eye of the storm has been the problem of violence towards Hindu minorities in Bangladesh, which the Indian institution has tried to lift at a number of platforms.

Formally, India has not been capable of talk with Bangladesh for the reason that neighbour has a caretaker authorities and never an elected one.

India shares deep historic, cultural, and linguistic ties with Bangladesh, rooted of their collaborative efforts throughout Bangladesh’s liberation. These connections persist even after the caretaker authorities took workplace in August final 12 months.

Not too long ago, the Indian authorities knowledgeable a parliamentary committee about its engagement with the interim authorities on state considerations, regional safety, rising extremism, assaults on minorities, and financial progress.

As current as March 1, 2025, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council launched a press assertion that violence towards non secular and ethnic minorities and indigenous communities has continued. Between August 4 and December 31, 2024, there have been 2,184 reported assaults concentrating on minorities.

On December 10, 2024, the Bangladeshi authorities introduced the arrest of 70 folks in reference to 88 circumstances of such assaults.

India has repeatedly urged Bangladesh to take concrete steps to guard minority rights and promote inclusion and tolerance. Nonetheless, the Bangladeshi authorities has not solely did not acknowledge the systematic persecution of minorities however has additionally downplayed the extent of violence towards Hindus since August 2024.

“Chief Adviser Md. Yunus, together with different advisers, phrases the studies of atrocities towards minorities in Bangladesh as media exaggeration and have tried to justify them as not communal however as ‘political killings’ of the Awami Leaguers. On January 12, 2025, the Workplace of Chief Adviser launched a press assertion that police investigation has discovered that over 98 per cent assaults on minorities from a complete of 1,415 incidents that have been verified between August 4-20, 2024, have been “politically motivated” and “didn’t have any communal color as being reported in Bangladesh”, International Secretary Vikram Misri mentioned in a presentation made to the standing committee for exterior affairs on March 26.

Relations between India and Bangladesh have deteriorated for the reason that fall of the Sheikh Hasina authorities on August 5. Following weeks of anti-government protests, Hasina resigned because the prime minister of Bangladesh and fled to India and has been staying right here beneath tight safety since.

With inputs from businesses