India’s decision to restrict Bangladesh exports shaped by Dhaka’s recent approach on Northeast

India’s decision to place restrictions on Bangladeshi products being exported to North-East India was shaped by several comments made by the interim regime including by Chief Adviser Md Yunus that it can choke the prosperity of NE states by denying them access to the Bay of Bengal.Members associated with the regime gave repeated threats including after Pahalgam attacks that Dhaka could even contemplate to annex the NE states. Ex-servicemen organised rallies in Dhaka last year in support of the demand. Recently Yunus was on a trip to Beijing where he mentioned that North-East India is “landlocked” and Dhaka is the “only guardian of the ocean for all this region” Under the Sheikh Hasina govt, India had concluded pacts giving NE states access to Bay of Bengal via Chittagong port. This was also aimed to increase Bangladesh’s revenues through royalty earned from the port for transportation of Indian goods, recalled persons familiar with the Indo-Bangladesh dynamics.Sources sinister design by the Yunus regime and the radicals led by pro-Pak Jamaat-e-Islami to create disturbances in the Northeastern states. For close to two decades Bangladesh was home to insurgents from the Northeast till Hasina handed over them to India in 2009. The subsequent years witnessed Bangladesh businesses making inroads into the Northeast and establishing consulates. India received transit rights for the Northeast via Bangladesh, which was denied by BNP-led governments in the past.The ushering of the Yunus government also witnessed cargoes from Pakistan getting unloaded in Chittagong port for the first time in over 50 years. There are apprehensions of ISI cells getting reactivated in Bangladesh in the backdrop of Pakistan’s growing military ties with Bangladesh. This will have cross-border implications into Northeastern states. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade issued a notification on Saturday night and decided to impose port restrictions on specified Bangladesh exports to India across all land customs stations (LCSs) or integrated check posts (ICPs) in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram and through Changrabandha and Fulbari in north Bengal.