India and Bangladesh would greatly improve people-to-people ties between their two adjacent nations and quicken their mutual collaboration in the fields of information, media, cinema, and television.
 
During a meeting on Thersday afternoon at the state minister's office in the Bangladesh Secretariat here, Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Pranay Verma and State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Muhammad Ali Arafat came to an agreement in this regard.
"During the discussion, we covered a variety of bilateral problems. However, we specifically discussed the BTV's planned two-hour international news analysis and news presentation period," Arafat said to reporters following the meeting.
 
According to the state minister, during the BTV's next two-hour block, they talked about the potential for developing collaboration between the state-run network and Indian news organisations, particularly ANI.
 
"We are considering extending the new segment, which will feature the analysis of world events, including stories from several South Asian nations, to three or four hours while upholding international standards, as BTV is carried in India. Thus, we'll make an effort to draw Indian viewers to this show," he continued.

In addition, Arafat stated, "We also talked about exploring further scopes to produce more coproduction like our 'Mujib: The Making of a Nation' film." They also discussed strengthening collaboration between the Film and Television Institute of India on various exchange and training courses.

"We will try to understand the process of combating disinformation and if needs, we will take initiatives to organise trainings on this issue," the state minister stated, saying that they discussed exchanging experiences of Indian institutions working on tackling disinformation.

Indian High Commissioner Pranay Verma had earlier stated, "We discussed many areas of bilateral cooperation," while leaving the meeting. We also conveyed our opinions that collaboration in the fields of information, media, cinema, and television is crucial to our connection and to our people-to-people interactions."

During the conference, he said that several excellent outcomes that both countries had attained via cooperative efforts were discussed.

"It was a joint production between the governments of India and Bangladesh, which came out last year... we did it together and its successes encouraged us to look at more such projects in the future," the Indian envoy stated in reference to the Bangabandhu biopic "Mujib: The Making of a Nation."

He said that they discussed ways to create institutional ties between Bangladeshi and Indian film and television institutes.

"And of course, we talked about more media exchanges and visits of media delegations ... so that they get more familiar with current developments and are able to convey the progresses that we made not just in our country but also in our relationship more accurately to the people of Dhaka," Verma stated.

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