সংগৃহীত ছবি
After 1975, conflicts arose with the small ethnic groups in the country’s hill tracts due to the lack of foresight of the dictators. The hill tracts remained cut off from the rest of the country. But after forming the government in 1996, honourable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina gave importance to resolving the problem.
In 1997, the Awami League government signed a historic peace agreement with the isolated people of the hilly regions, establishing the rights of Bengali and minority people there. At the same time, tourism expanded in the regions, too.
After forming the Awami League government in 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina started efforts to get a fair share of the waters. In 2014, Bangladesh won 19,467 square kilometres of the disputed 25,602 square kilometres of maritime territory with India after fighting a long legal battle in the arbitration court. As a result, Bangladesh got all the 10 gas blocks once claimed by India. Earlier in 2012, Bangladesh settled the maritime boundary dispute with Myanmar and established authority over the huge reservoir. Bangladesh also gets ownership of 18 blocks out of 28 blocks located in the sea of that region.
It is the Awami League government that was able to end the 40-year-long dispute with its neighbours over the maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh gets a permanent maritime boundary, covering 1 lakh 18 thousand 813 square km. But before that, Bangladesh could not even acess to 50 thousand square kilometres of the maritime border as no other government tried to understand this fair dues of the country.
