Five CMs To Accompany PM to Dhaka

New Delhi, Sep 1 : Signaling the growing importance of Bangladesh to India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will take along five chief ministers to Dhaka when he travels there next week for one of his biggest foreign policy moves in the region.

The chief ministers of West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram will accompany Singh, an event that is extremely rare in Indian politics. It is intended to signal to Bangladesh that India is ready to press the reset button on ties with its eastern neighbor.

The visit is likely to see India and Bangladesh finally working out a comprehensive boundary agreement.

This would be the logical implementation of the Indira-Mujib agreement of 1974, which could not be implemented since Mujib was assassinated in 1975.

While its no secret that India's ties with the Awami League is much more pleasant, Indian sources said they were going the extra mile to keep the opposition BNP on board.

Bangladeshi opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia will meet Singh, which Indians see as the first step in a continued engagement of all sides of political opinion in Bangladesh.