PM Narendra Modi, Bangladesh's Muhammad Yunus seated together at BIMSTEC dinner in Thailand amid tensions

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bangladesh chief advisor Muhammad Yunus were seated together at a dinner hosted along the sidelines of BIMSTEC Summit in Thailand's Bangkok on Thursday evening.

Modi was received by Thailand Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who also received the Heads of State and Heads of Government who attended the BIMSTEC Dinner in Bangkok.

The prime minister was seen seated in between Yunus and Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. This comes amid a stress in bilateral relations between New Delhi and Dhaka following the ouster of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina on August 5 last year.

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Request for bilateral meeting

The two nations saw tensions in ties due to differences over the alleged instances of violence targeting Hindu minorities in Bangladesh and India's decision to grant asylum to Sheikh Hasina.

Dhaka had requested a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the BIMSTEC Summit to sort out differences, but Modi's schedule in Thailand did not mention the requested meeting.

News agency PTI reported that Modi is also likely to meet Yunus on Friday on the sidelines of the BIMSTEC.

“From our side, we are fully ready for the meeting. Now, we await a positive response from India,” Bangladesh foreign secretary Md. Jashim Uddin had said. He acknowledged the existing “strain” in bilateral relations but said this could be overcome if a bilateral meeting is held between the two leaders.

Yunus on India's Northeast

Tensions in bilateral ties also seem to have escalated after Yunus's comment on India's northeastern states during his visit to the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) annual conference in China.

Yunus had urged China to extend its economic influence to Bangladesh, saying that India's northeastern states being landlocked could prove to be an opportunity. His remark, allegedly made during a four-day visit to China, surfaced on social media on Monday.

“The seven states of India, the eastern part of India, are called the seven sisters. They are a landlocked region of India. They have no way to reach out to the ocean,” Yunus said. He called Bangladesh the “only guardian of the ocean” in the region and said this could be a massive opportunity, an extension of the Chinese economy.

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The remark was condemned by several leaders from India's ruling party, the BJP. India's external affairs minister S Jaishankar's comment on Thursday during a foreign minister's meeting of BIMSTEC seemed like a riposte to Yunus's suggestion.

“Our northeastern region in particular is emerging as a connectivity hub for the BIMSTEC, with a myriad network of roads, railways, waterways, grids and pipelines,” he said, adding that India is “aware of its special responsibility” in the context of BIMSTEC.

The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional organization of seven South Asian and Southeast Asian nations with a total population of 1.73 billion people and a combined GDP of US$5.2 trillion. Thailand is the current chairman of the grouping. The current summit was the first physical meeting of the leaders since the 4th BIMSTEC Summit in Kathmandu, Nepal in 2018.