In a sharp rebuttal to Bangladesh’s recent comments on India’s strategic Siliguri corridor—commonly called the “Chicken’s Neck”—Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday spotlighted two narrow and strategically sensitive land corridors within Bangladesh itself, calling them even “more vulnerable.”
Weeks after Bangladesh’s interim government head Muhammad Yunus referred to the Siliguri corridor as a vulnerability and suggested Bangladesh as the “guardian of the ocean” for India’s landlocked Northeast, Sarma took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to share a detailed map and geo-strategic explanation.
He pointed out Bangladesh’s own “Chicken Necks”:
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North Bangladesh Corridor – An 80 km strip connecting Dakhin Dinajpur (India) and South West Garo Hills (Meghalaya), which if disrupted, could isolate Bangladesh’s Rangpur division.
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Chittagong Corridor – A 28 km narrow stretch from South Tripura to the Bay of Bengal, serving as the only land link between Bangladesh’s political capital Dhaka and its economic powerhouse, Chittagong.
“These corridors are even smaller and more critical than India’s Siliguri Corridor,” Sarma said. “I am only presenting geographical facts that some may tend to forget.”
The remarks follow Yunus’s statement during his recent China visit, where he positioned Bangladesh as a strategic gateway to the sea for India’s northeast and called for stronger China-Bangladesh cooperation.
Calling Yunus’s comments “offensive and strongly condemnable,” Sarma emphasized that such statements reflect deeper geopolitical agendas and should not be taken lightly. He further warned that past calls to sever India’s Siliguri corridor pose real strategic threats and called for urgent development of alternate routes and robust infrastructure to better integrate the Northeast with the mainland.
India’s Siliguri corridor—a 20 km-wide land bridge in northern West Bengal—connects the Northeast to the rest of the country. Sandwiched between Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh, its importance has made it a longstanding focus in India’s national security strategy.
“Engineering challenges may be significant, but with determination and innovation, we must reinforce and diversify our connectivity,” Sarma added, reiterating calls for alternative railway and highway projects bypassing the narrow corridor.
