Indian nationals in BTRC's highly security-sensitive positions
Faisal Rahim
The disclosure that the Government has appointed five Indian nationals to senior positions of highly security-sensitive Bangladesh Telecommuni-cation Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has come as a bolt from the blue last week as newspaper reports on this latest strategic development caught the nation by surprise.
What is happening in the high places of power corridor in Dhaka and Delhi was the common question that many people here asked each other with eye brows raised and suspicion spread in the country's political landscape from the capital down to the districts.
Telecom specialists
The news item said the BTRC has appointed five Indian telecommunication specialists to highly sensitive places of the country's highest policy making authority controlling the telecommunication sector. And in doing so, the government has removed the Bangladesh Army's Signal Corps engineers from those posts.
Earlier the Government reshuffled the total BTRC management with new political recruitment from the post of the chairman to other important posts. With it came the five Indian telecommunication experts.
The five appointees included one consultant team leader, one director TCPL, one regulatory specialist, one telecom specialist and a support staff. They are having long service background in the Indian telecommunication sector and joined the BTRC on March 5 this year as their joining reports suggest.
Rejoinder and secrecy
The media consultant of the BTRC,
Timir Lal Dutta, (another indian stooge lied and caught red handed) however dismissed the news as a hoax.
In a rejoinder he said no such Indian personnel are working with the BTRC at this moment. But the news item has not only disclosed their names, identity and the joining date but also their adopted address in Dhaka at the IDB Bhavan on 7th floor and the home addresses back in Delhi and Bihar, reproduced from their bio-data with the BTRC.
But the question now agitating the public mind on the disclosure of the news item is, why the Government is putting Indian nationals on such highly sensitive posts and, moreover, trying to deny their presence. The denial of the news item further aggravates suspicion raising question on the Government's motive behind appointing Indian nationals which the government wants to keep secret.
Many people here including strategic analysts wonder whether the Government is now working on a scheme to integrate Bangladesh's telecommuni-cation system with the Indian system. There may be also a plan, they argue, to harmonise Bangladesh's telecommuni-cation system with that of India so that Delhi gets greater access to telecommunication system Dhaka now operates in the domestic and external sectors.
Harmonizing traffic code
They say, when Awami League came to power in 1996, India not only brought pressure on Bangladesh to give transit facility through Bangladesh for movement to its northeastern states but also floated a proposal to harmonise Dhaka's traffic code and signalling system with that of India.
The idea was that when both the countries would use the same road system and share other traffic infrastructure, there is no alternative to developing such a unipolar system.
The issue also came up in discussion that time at some seminars and dialogues some of which this scribe had also attended.
This time the reported presence of the Indian experts on the BTRC policy making body not only work as a reminder of the past initiatives to build the two country's traffic system jointly but also of the new initiative this time to bring the two country's telecom system closer to each other. It may be an integration of Bangladesh' system or its harmonisation with Indian telecommunication, analyst here suggest.
Undisclosed understanding
They say the people are not aware of the present Government's 'undisclosed understanding' with the Indian government to which it owes too much of its electoral victory and continued existence. Consequently, the government is working on a long Indian shopping list such as providing Delhi the transit or corridor facility, agreeing to Asian Highway route as per Indian choice, marginalising BNP in politics, holding war crime trials or destroying the country's Islamist forces in the name of fighting back terrorist activities.
Under the programmes the Government is working on the other hand, to take up a massive dredging programmes of the country's major river routes at huge cost and put the Ashugonj as a port of call to the Indians to move their goods to Agartala across the Akhaura border.
Transport corridor
It is also working to quickly build the Padma bridge with the railway line facilities to offer the Indians a shortcut transport corridor of goods and passengers from Jessore to Dhaka and onward to Akhaura or Mohishasan on the Indian border across Kulaura railway junction in Sylhet.
The interesting thing is that, as experts point out, the government is doing all these at its own cost and undertakes to continue it. The World Bank, Asian Development Bank and such other multilateral agencies will provide loans to Bangladesh government to rebuild and strengthen the connectivity system for the benefits of the Indians but at Dhaka's own cost.
The Bangladesh government will have to take these loans and repay it, although its direct beneficiary will be the Indian government and its giant economy. And when all such things are building up, Bangladesh does not know yet what financial benefits it will get from transit and such other facilities; no such study was ever mooted and even now there is no initiative either.
Analysts here wonder the presence of the Indian telecommunication experts on BTRC may not be an isolated event but part of a long process to integrate as much as possible the country's economy and institutions to that of India to slowly turn it into a vassal state.
No confidentiality
Coming back to the presence of the Indian telecommunication experts on the BTRC management, critics say the country will have no confidentiality of its own in the new situation as it is going to emerge.
The BTRC as the country's highest regulatory body works like the artery of the nation's telecommunication system. It controls land phone and mobile phone services, Internet, submarine cable system, facilitates transmission of news, data and information of the Government at home and abroad, can overhear conversation over telephone and also allocates frequencies to TV channels.
The BTRC is also having access to the Army's signal corps and other communication system, experts here say pointing to some sensitive areas and apprehend that the foreign experts sitting at the country's nerve center of Dhaka's communication system may sabotage the whole nation at the time of a crisis.
The Prime Minister may have put them in such sensitive places as safety valves to her Government but they would remain the biggest threat to the nation. Pointing to the new developments, analysts here say that the country is in the crossroads, we are having sensitive information every time but do not know exactly where the journey will stop.
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