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.