India wants to ‘settle’ dispute over ‘grey area’ in the Bay on unequal terms

India wants to 'settle' the dispute involving Bangladesh's rights on the 'grey area' in the Bay of Bengal through diplomatic negotiations and urged Dhaka to withdraw its 2009 objection in return for New Delhi's withdrawal of only one of its submissions to the UN.
India repeatedly requested Bangladesh for the withdrawal of its claims on a part of the 'grey area' spanning 720 square kilometres in the deep sea. But India prefers to resolve only continental shelf claim dispute keeping the other two problems unresolved, the Foreign Ministry said.
    The issue has come to the fore as the Indian Prime Minister and Indian Foreign Minister are scheduled to visit Dhaka to discuss various issues along with this crucial one.
"It sounds very simple, but practically not, if Bangladesh prefers to resolve only continental shelf claim dispute keeping the two other problems unresolved, in future it might be extremely difficult to resolve other issues as it has political implications," a senior official of the Foreign Ministry told the Daily Observer on Sunday preferring anonymity.
"If Bangladesh agrees to withdraw its 2009 objection in return for India's withdrawal of only 2011 submission, it would be a wrong decision. It should be seen holistically and Bangladesh should and must resolve the maritime dispute at one stroke by telling India to withdraw its entire objection, otherwise we would be landlocked and lose our rights over some areas of our own territory," the official added.
To address the issue Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina asked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (in October 2019, during her last visit to India) to withdraw its claim over the water of the grey areas that cuts off Bangladesh's access to the deep sea and creates a dispute over 9,000 square kilometers of Bangladesh territorial waters.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina handed over a map of the Bay of Bengal to the Indian Prime Minister and Indian Foreign Affair Minister at that time and requested them to accept Bangladesh's claims on a part of the 'grey area' spanning 720 square kilometres in the deep sea.
"Following the meeting a technical committee was formed but failed to reach any conclusion. Bangladesh finally lodged a submission in 2019 to ensure its rights over the Bay of Bengal," he said.
"We lodged the submission to delimit our maritime boundary in proper manner. We hoped to get justice through this arbitration," Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen told this correspondent earlier.
In accordance with the verdict by the Bay of Bengal Maritime Boundary Arbitration, Bangladesh published a gazette in 2015 declaring Haribhanga River as the first baseline point, Putney Island as the second, Dakhin Bhashanchar as third, Cox's Bazar as fourth and St Martin's Island as the fifth baseline point. With the new gazette it repealed the notification it submitted to the UN in 1974.
After two years, India in 2017 put forward its objection to Bangladesh gazette and made a submission to the United Nations.
In the submission India objected to Bangladesh's base point 2 (Putney Island) and base point 5 (St Martin's Island) and claimed that due to these two points Bangladesh's Exclusive Economic Zone encroached into Indian Exclusive Economic Zone in the 'grey area'.
In 2009 Bangladesh challenged India's claim to the continental shelf while India made two submissions in 2011 and 2017 objecting Bangladesh's claim to the continental shelf, baseline points and encroachment into the 'grey area'. Since that time, the Indian side asked Bangladesh to withdraw the objection related to the continental shelf and sit for discussion on the other issues.
Bangladesh government has declined to entertain the Indian request to withdraw Bangladesh's objection.
The delimitation line drawn by the arbitral tribunal has created the so-called 'grey area' beyond 200 miles off Bangladesh's coast but within 200 miles of the coast of India. The verdict said Bangladesh had sovereign rights to explore the continental shelf. But India is the owner of the waters of those areas.
Now the question arises how local and foreign ships enter and exit the Bangladesh territory and how could it start hydro-carbon explorations in the disputed EEZ?
However, the arbitral tribunal left the issue to the parties to determine practical arrangements for the exercise of their respective rights in the 'grey area', a senior official of the Foreign Ministry said quoting the UN verdict.
Bangladesh has taken up this legal move to resolve the issue as it failed to reach any solution through bi-lateral dialogues over the last five years. It sought Indian support to establish Bangladesh's right to the water of the 'grey area' created by the judgments in the maritime delimitation cases between Bangladesh and India (2014) in the northern Bay of Bengal but India set the condition of  'withdrawal of only 2011 submission to the UN."