New Delhi: India on Friday (July 3) said its approach to the Teesta issue would take into account “all related developments”, days after China pledged support for a river management scheme on the transboundary river in Bangladesh.Last week, Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman visited Beijing and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, where the two countries elevated bilateral ties and released a joint communique covering cooperation from river management to regional connectivity.The communique said China would extend support “within its capacity” to the Teesta river project and help experts from both sides expedite its feasibility study.In answer to a question about the visit’s outcomes, external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal only addressed the Teesta issue.“India’s development assistance for projects in Bangladesh is based on a mutually agreed roadmap, which is regularly reviewed,” he said.Stating that India’s “views” have been “previously conveyed to the Bangladesh side”, Jaiswal added: “We will factor all related developments in our overall approach to the Teesta issue”.During the China visit, Chinese water resources minister Li Guoying had also told Rahman that Beijing would extend “full cooperation” on water resource management.Bangladeshi foreign ministry officials cited by The Daily Star said the Teesta project, which lies entirely within Bangladeshi territory, should not create difficulties with India, though they acknowledged that a water-sharing agreement with New Delhi remains essential to ensure adequate dry season flows.Discussions over the river scheme date back to 2020, when Dhaka sought a $725 million soft loan from Beijing for the roughly $1 billion project.Bangladesh’s interim government under Muhammad Yunus first welcomed a Chinese role in the Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project (TRCMRP) in a joint statement during his March 2025 visit to Beijing, and the elected Bangladesh Nationalist Party government formally sought Chinese involvement for the first time during foreign minister Khalilur Rahman’s visit to Beijing in May.Concerns over Chinese involvement in the project are not new for policymakers in India, given its location near the strategically sensitive Siliguri corridor. During then-foreign secretary Vinay Kwatra’s visit to Dhaka in May 2024, India had offered to fund the Teesta project itself, a move widely read as an effort to keep Beijing out.Nearly two months before she was ousted from power by a students-led movement, Sheikh Hasina was in India for an official visit. One of the key announcements was that India would send a technical team to Bangladesh to evaluate the Teesta project.This year, foreign secretary Vikram Misri told visiting Bangladeshi journalists in New Delhi in May that India remained ready to hold talks with Dhaka on the project.The TRCMRP is separate from the long-pending Teesta water-sharing treaty between India and Bangladesh, which has remained stalled for over 15 years after then-West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee objected to a draft agreement in 2011, citing the state’s agricultural interests.After the BJP won a landslide victory in the state’s assembly election in May, Bangladesh’s foreign minister had said at the time that Dhaka would wait for clarity from the incoming West Bengal government before considering whether the stalled water-sharing pact could be revisited.