Actress Rituparna Sengupta at the South Asian Free Media Association meet. (Sanat Kumar Sinha)

Calcutta, June 30: External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee today said India wanted Bangladesh to allow use of its roads and rivers for better links between Calcutta, Myanmar and the Northeast.

“There is an old road link between India and Myanmar via Chittagong. Why can’t it be restored? What is stopping us? There was also a river route between Calcutta and Guwahati through Bangladesh?” he said while inaugurating a conference of the SAARC-backed South Asian Free Media Association here.

The Maitree Express between Calcutta and Dhaka may be extended to Tripura. “We are also looking at the possibility of extending the train to Agartala,” the minister added.

Told that the train was not getting passengers because of long delays in customs and immigration clearances, he promised the problem would be sorted out soon.

Speaking on the occasion, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said the people of the two countries were closely linked by language and culture and there should be more exchanges between them.