NEW DELHI: President Pranab Mukherjee today said blending of software content from both India and Bangladesh in the fields of art, culture, literature, music, and sports will help promote and preserve the composite Bengali cultural heritage which is the proud inheritance of all Bengali speaking people.

Launching Akashvani Maitree channel in Kolkata, he said this will make the channel a unique one and establish it in the hearts of millions of radio loving people both in India and Bangladesh as well as outside.

Test trials had begun several months earlier and it was to have been launched in June but waited till the President could go.

The President said India and Bangladesh are not just neighbours but are bound by an umbilical connection of ethnicity and kinship. India always attaches highest importance to bilateral relations with Bangladesh because of our shared history, heritage, culture, language, physical proximity and also the role which the two nations can play together for the development and prosperity of the entire subcontinent and beyond.

The bedrock on which the edifice of this unique relationship stands is the unwavering faith of both the countries in democratic values, principles of liberalism, egalitarianism, secularism and respect for each other’s sovereignty and integrity.

With the launch of Akashvani Maitree, he said a new chapter is being added in the annals of India-Bangladesh relations. He said that Akashvani Maitree and its multimedia website is a unique venture and initiative of All India Radio not only for the Bengali listeners in West Bengal, Bangladesh and the adjoining areas but the entire Bengali speaking Diaspora living in different parts of the globe.

The station is a terrestrial channel beamed from Chinsurah from a state-of-the-art DRM high power transmitter which is capable of reaching out to listeners in both West Bengal and the whole of Bangladesh.

AIR External Services Director Amlan Jyoti Mazumdar had earlier told radioandmusic.com that The most unique aspect was that the new channel would also beam programmes that are either co-proiductions or produced by producers from Bangladesh. It could also be streamed online on airworldservice.org.