Guwahati: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday (December 16, 2025) warned that New Delhi will not remain silent if Bangladeshi leaders continue making threats to isolate India’s northeastern region.
Speaking to journalists, Sarma criticised repeated statements from Bangladesh calling for a takeover of the northeast, calling them a “bad mindset.” “For over a year, certain voices in Bangladesh have demanded the merger of India’s northeast with their country. Such ideas are completely unacceptable,” he said.
The Chief Minister emphasised India’s strength, noting that it is a large nation, a nuclear power, and the world’s fourth-largest economy. “We will not remain silent if Bangladesh directs such behaviour towards India,” he added.
Sarma’s remarks followed statements by Hasnat Abdullah, a leader of Bangladesh’s newly formed National Citizen Party, who claimed India’s northeastern region should be isolated. Abdullah threatened, “If India continues to shelter those who do not respect our country’s sovereignty and human rights, we will shelter Indian separatists and cut off the northeast.” He also accused India of supporting and arming allies of the ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina against the current government.
Abdullah is not the first Bangladeshi leader to issue such threats. Earlier this year, Mohammed Yunus, Chief Adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government, described India’s eastern states as landlocked and asserted that Bangladesh controlled access to the ocean. Later, threats shifted to India’s strategic “chicken’s neck,” the narrow 22–35 km corridor in West Bengal’s Siliguri connecting the northeast with the mainland.
Sarma urged Bangladesh to focus on its own two vulnerable corridors before threatening India. He pointed to the 80 km passage from Dakhin Dinajpur in West Bengal to South West Garo Hills in Meghalaya, and the 28 km Chittagong Corridor from South Tripura to the Bay of Bengal.