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Dikshit de Sandeep
New Delhi, August 26
The India-Bangladesh Rivers Joint Commission, which met here on Thursday after a twelve-year hiatus, made progress in exchanging water from non-unusual rivers and made the decision to include 8 more rivers where India will present information, but an agreement on the Teesta River has not progressed much.
The text of the Memorandum of Understanding to provisionally share the water of the Kushiyara River was finalized at the 38th ministerial-level assembly of the Bangladesh-India Rivers Joint Commission. Agreement to share Kushiyara water is expected to be signed Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s stopover in New Delhi on September 6 and 7. This will allow Bangladesh to irrigate 5,000 hectares of agricultural land using water from Kushiyara.
The two delegations also prepared draft water-sharing frameworks for the Manu, Muhuri, Khowai, Gumti, Dharla and Dudhkumar rivers.
The assembly also agreed to expand the scope of ongoing cooperation to include eight additional rivers for data exchange. India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers, seven of which were known before water-sharing agreements were expanded. The factor will be further discussed at the ITC Technical Committee, which will likely be held this year in Dhaka. India recently extended the era of flood knowledge sharing beyond 15 October for Bangladesh to deal with unforeseen floods.
At the meeting, the delegation of Bangladesh also expressed its fear of the delay in signing the Teesta Water Distribution Treaty. Water Resources Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat is confident that the factor is being actively discussed, according to an MEA press release.
Bangladesh’s Minister of State for Water Resources Zaheed Farooque led Bangladesh’s 17-member delegation, which included AKM Enamul Hoque Shameem, a lawmaker, and Kabir Bin Anwar, the ministry’s senior secretary, among others.
The Indian delegation led by Shekhawat and Pankaj Kumar, Secretary of the Ministry of Water Resources, attended the meeting, among others.
The two sides agreed to conduct a feasibility study for the optimal use of livestock water through Bangladesh under the provisions of the Ganges Water Distribution Treaty, 1996.
Flooding, coastal cover works, joint watershed control and the Indian River Interconnection Project were also discussed.
The assembly further finalized the design and location of the water intake problems on the Feni River to meet the drinking water wishes of the city of Tripura in Sabroom. India took 1. 82 cusecs of water from the Feni River as part of an interim agreement signed in October 2019.
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