Mamata due next month

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is set to arrive in Bangladesh on February 19 at the invitation of Bangladesh government.

Highly-placed sources at the foreign ministry and West Bengal government said Mamata accepted the invitation instantly after Bangladesh Deputy High Commissioner in Kolkata Zokey Ahad handed over the formal letter, from Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali, to her at the state secretariat yesterday.

“Mamata was very happy after receiving the invitation. We had a very cordial discussion that lasted for over an hour,” Zokey told The Daily Star over the phone.

This was Zokey's first courtesy call on the chief of Trinamool Congress after he was appointment in Kolkata nearly two months ago.

Earlier, Mamata, who had opposed Teesta water sharing and land boundary agreements with Bangladesh, received a copy of the invitation letter through the diplomatic channel.

During her stay in Bangladesh, Mamata is expected to attend programmes marking the Amar Ekushey on February 21, said a foreign ministry official.

Recently, Mamata has dropped her opposition to the LBA, which means the deal would be signed anytime. “So, this is the right time to motivate her so that other pending bilateral issues can also be addressed," said officials.

In August 2011, former foreign minister Dipu Moni had also officially invited Mamata to visit Bangladesh.

Mamata last visited Bangladesh in 1998 as the head of Trinamool Congress, along with leaders of Communist Party of India (Marxist), to attend Awami League's 50th founding anniversary.

This is going to be her first visit here after becoming the chief minister of West Bengal in May, 2011.

During her visit, she is expected to meet President Abdul Hamid, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and other high-profile government leaders.

Many consider the upcoming visit an “icebreaker” to smoothen Dhaka's stained relationship with Mamata after she backed out at the eleventh hour from the then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Bangladesh on September 6-7, 2011, opposing the Teesta water-sharing treaty.

President Md Abdul Hamid has also met Mamata twice during his recent India visit.

A few weeks prior to that, a delegation of Bangladeshi lawmakers, led by Syed Ashraful Islam of Awami League, had met Mamata in Kolkata as well.

Diplomatic sources said the initial spadework for Mamata's visit to Bangladesh was done during her interactions with President Hamid and the Bangladeshi lawmakers.

Trinamool Congress chief in recent months reportedly appeared keen to make a positive start to her relations with the Hasina government.

In the recent past, Mamata had tried to use the connections of a member of her culture clan, a former Left sympathiser, and a celebrity MP popular in Bangladesh to get an official invite from Hasina to visit Dhaka, but the efforts had drawn a blank, reported The Telegraph in Kolkata.

According to a source, Mamata's interest is rooted in her political concerns at a time she is saddled with multiple problems such as the Saradha scandal and her government's failure to crack down on JMB modules in Bengal.

She has recently said that she planned to institute a chair named after Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Calcutta University.