New Delh: India has opened a new 100MW power transmission line to Bangladesh and received 10 GB bandwidth for internet connectivity to Tripura in return, the latest in a series of infrastructure deals the neighbors are swiftly inking amid a rare warmth in ties.

The power from Palatana in Tripura will add to the 500MW India already supplies to Bangladesh, and the bandwidth from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh to Agartala will for the first time open up India’s Northeast as an internet gateway to the outside world. India currently leases internet bandwidth through Mumbai and Chennai alone.

“This is an occasion for new energy, the energy of development,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, inaugurating the projects from New Delhi in coordination with his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka and Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar in Agartala, using video-conferencing facilities. “At the same time, a new gateway has opened up for us, because till now, only the west and south were our entries to the digital world and the east was untouched.”

Journalists thronged conference hall 2 in the secretariat at the new capital complex in Agartala March 23 morning for the video-conference. Two giant screens with highspeed Internet connectivity, installed by engineers of BSNL and NIC, Tripura, had been put up on either side of the conference room.

Exactly at 10.10am, the faces of external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, communication minister Ravishankar Prasad, power minister Pijush Goyal beamed on the giant screen. For a few moments the Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar also beamed. Then came on screen Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, her ministerial colleague Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali, Indian high commissioner to Bangladesh , Harshvardhan Singla, and a few high officials, The Telegraph reported.

Sarkar also described the day as a “glorious beginning. This co-operation between India and Bangladesh will find a place in history and with other follow-up action, a great era of peace and prosperity will begin with continuing initiative for improving relations.” He added that Bangladesh’s co-operation had made possible the construction of the 726.6MW Palatana thermal power project as heavy machinery and equipment had been transported to Palatana across Bangladesh territory free of cost.

The launch follows close on the heels of a landmark deal struck by Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited to build a $1.6 billion power plant in Khulna in south Bangladesh. China, too, had bid for the project and BHEL’s lower bid – which won the project – represents a victory for India’s new-found aggression in trying to tap into the goodwill it currently enjoys with its neighbour to make deeper economic and strategic inroads there.

“We shouldn’t spend all our time only trying to resolve past problems,” Bangladesh high commissioner here Syed Muazzim Ali had said last month at an interaction with journalists. “We should also look at the future.” The current warmth, which Ali said was at its “highest” since 1974 – when Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and Indira Gandhi, the Prime Ministers of the two countries, had met and signed several key pacts – is rooted in a major breakthrough last year.

The final signing of the land boundary agreement by the two countries during Modi’s May visit to Dhaka ended 68 years of tension over a British border demarcation that left land belonging to each neighbor embedded within the boundaries of the other. India and Mujib had agreed to the pact in 1974, but successive Indian governments had failed to implement it under political pressure despite sustained prods from the foreign office.

Hasina, too, has aided India like few previous Bangladesh governments have, in tracking down militants from the Northeast who have sought shelter in the neighboring country.

“Together, we are creating an example on how to build good neighborly relations, for the world to see,” Modi said today.