Senior Indian diplomat Vikram Doraiswami will arrive in Dhaka on October 5 and take charge as the new Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh, officials said here.

Former Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Riva Ganguly Das left for Delhi on Friday after serving one-and-a-half years as envoy in Dhaka. She will join as Secretary (East) at the Ministry of External Affairs.

During her tenure, Bangladesh's exports to India reached $1 billion a year. The Indo-Bangla relationship received a huge fillip, especially in terms of connectivity and infrastructure, including rail, road, power, and waterways. Some irritants remain including border deaths and not signing of the water-sharing deals of the Teesta and other common rivers.

"Bangladesh is a special place for us. The hospitality that we get here....we don't get it anywhere in the world," she told journalists at a farewell programme recently. Das was scheduled to leave for Delhi in the middle of this year, but had to stay on due to the coronavirus pandemic, as well as for the sixth Joint Consultative Commission meeting held on September 29 where Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen and his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar led the respective delegations.

New envoy Doraiswami, a 1992-batch officer of Indian Foreign Service, was earlier India's Ambassador to South Korea and also Joint Secretary of the Americas division in the MEA from 2012 till 2014. The change happens at a time when Bangladesh is preparing for the celebrations of the golden jubilee of its independence and also the 50th anniversary of India-Bangladesh diplomatic relationship next year.

India and Bangladesh have chalked out scores of joint programmes in both countries as well as in some other countries to mark the occasions.
(IANS)