Bangladesh’s interim govt recalls 5 envoys, including high commissioner to India

NEW DELHI: Bangladesh’s interim government issued orders this week recalling envoys to key capitals and world bodies, including the high commissioner to India, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The orders issued by the administration division of Bangladesh’s foreign ministry have not gone down well within the country’s foreign service as several of the envoys who were recalled, including the high commissioner to India, were not political appointees, the people said on condition of anonymity.

Besides the high commissioner to India Mustafizur Rahman, the others recalled are the permanent representative to the UN in New York and the envoys to Australia, Belgium and Portugal, the people said. Some of the envoys who were recalled, including Rahman, were set to retire in the coming months.

The development comes at a time when India-Bangladesh relations are at a low, following the collapse of the Sheikh Hasina administration in early August in the face of protests led by student organisations. The caretaker administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus assumed office days after Hasina stepped down and fled to India.

The caretaker setup in Dhaka made persistent efforts to seek a meeting between Yunus and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York last month, the people said. However, the Indian side was unhappy with Yunus’ comments criticising India and raising the possibility of seeking the extradition of Hasina, the people added.

Rahman, a career diplomat who was appointed the high commissioner to India in July 2022 and earlier served as Bangladesh’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva and the envoy to Switzerland and Singapore, played a key role in driving development cooperation and forging better ties between the two sides.

In a separate development, India’s high commissioner to Bangladesh, Pranay Verma, met Bangladesh’s de facto foreign minister Touhid Hossain in Dhaka on Wednesday and discussed bilateral ties. The issue of activating regular bilateral mechanisms figured in the meeting, according to a readout from the Bangladeshi side.

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