Bangladesh, India meet on sharing common rivers

Bangladesh, India meet on sharing common rivers

DHAKA (Reuter): Water resources ministers of Bangladesh and
India yesterday resumed talks on cooperation in the use of the
waters of their common rivers for the first time in seven years,
meeting sources said.

They said Indian Water Resources Minister Shees Ram Ola and
his Bangladeshi counterpart Abdur Razzak headed their sides at
the Joint River Commission meeting.

It was the first top level meeting since India and Bangladesh
signed a landmark treaty last December on sharing water from the
Ganges river.

The Indian minister arrived in Dhaka on Friday night for a
three-day visit.

The treaty was signed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who
assumed power in June last year, and then Indian Prime Minister
H.D. Deve Gowda.

Officials attending the meeting said the two sides were
reviewing the 30-year-old Ganges treaty that ran into trouble on
the first year after Bangladesh reported low water flow to the
country through the Farakka barrage in India.

India built the barrage in 1954 to divert the flow of the
Ganges, which irrigates much of northern India, before running
down into Bangladesh.

Bangladesh has complained to India after the flow of the
Ganges water slowed to nearly 10,000 cusecs (cubic feet per
second) at one stage in March against a minimum of 35,000 cusecs
as stipulated in the treaty.

India says the water flow dropped because ice was not melting
enough to raise the water level of the river.

The officials said the two ministers were also discussing the
sharing of another major river, the Teesta, and exchange of flood
forecasting information.

The two countries share 54 common rivers, including the Ganges
and Teesta.

The officials said Bangladesh asked India to provide regular
flood information as some of its regions were often flooded by
waters rolling down from swelled Indian rivers like the Gumti,
Khowai and Shameswari.

"Bangladesh needs information on water and flood conditions of
those rivers on a continuous basis so that it can take
precautionary measures," one official said.