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Bangladesh is once again going to press for signing an agreement with India on the water sharing of the River Teesta and concluding the negotiations on six other trans-boundary rivers that have been hanging in the balance for over a decade while diminishing flows in the common rivers have been affecting lives and livelihoods in the lower riparian country.

The issues would be raised in the long-due minister-level meeting of the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission now scheduled for August 25 in New Delhi after 12 years ahead of prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India in September, said officials in Dhaka.    

The officials, however, do not see possibility of any progress in signing the Teesta water-sharing treaty in the 38th JRC meeting. 

‘Obviously, we will press for the long-pending Teesta water sharing agreement in the meeting. This is also the expectation of the country’s people as an interim deal was ready for singing in 2011,’ JRC Bangladesh member Md Mahmudur Rahman told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·.

He said that a memorandum of understanding on the withdrawal of water from the River Kushiyara for irrigation was expected to be signed besides negotiations on six other common rivers — Manu, Muhuri, Khowai, Gumti, Dharla and Dudhkumar.

The 37th JRC meeting was held in New Delhi in March 2010.

State Minister for Water Resources Zaheed Farooque will lead a 17-member delegation from Bangladesh side in the ministerial talks with his Indian counterpart Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in the Indian capital. The water resources ministers are co-chairs of the commission.

The Bangladesh side would also raise concerns about the unilateral withdrawal of waters from the trans-boundary rivers upstream in India, the falling water flow of the River Mahananda and the flow of industrial wastes into Bangladesh through Akhaura bordering area polluting water bodies in Brahmanbaria, officials at the water resources ministry said.

The officials said that they would also ask for an exchange of increased flood forecast data for effective warning in Bangladesh which was experiencing flash floods more frequently in Sylhet and Rangpur regions.

They said that Sylhet and Rangpur regions had been hit hard by frequent floods, destroying crops and houses and putting people in the regions in further hardships while decreasing flows in the common rivers have been adversely affecting their agriculture in dry season. 

The JRC secretary-level meeting will be held on August 23 to finalise the agenda for the minister-level meeting where a renewal of the 30-year Ganges water sharing treaty signed between the two counties in December 1996 would also  be discussed as the deal would expire in 2026, said a senior official at the ministry.

India has kept stalled the talks on sharing water of common rivers with Bangladesh for over 12 years holding back the signing of interim agreements on Teesta and Feni rivers and making negotiations on the six others uncertain.

Although the 38th JRC meeting was scheduled to be held Dhaka, India has declined since 2010 to hold the minister-level meeting sought by Bangladesh to settle outstanding issues. 

India has also been holding the chairmanship of the commission for over 12 consecutive years in violation of Article 3 of the Statute of the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission, which says, ‘The chairmanship of the commission shall be held annually in turn by Bangladesh and India.’

Bangladesh has sent over a dozen letters to Indian authorities in the past 12 years through both diplomatic and JRC channels for the minister-level meeting but received no positive response from India, officials in Dhaka said.

Chapter V of the statute says, ‘The ordinary sessions of the Commission shall be held as often as necessary, generally four times a year. In addition, special meetings may be convened any time at the request of either government.’

Successive Indian prime ministers Narendra Modi and Manmohan Singh continued promising to conclude the interim agreements on sharing waters of seven trans-boundary rivers, the Teesta in particular, in spite of requests from Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina on almost every occasion they met.

After the finalisation of the draft of the Teesta deal by the two sides, India backtracked on signing the treaty just hours before the arrival of Manmohan Singh in Dhaka on September 6, 2011 on the plea that West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee objected to the agreement.

According to the framework of an interim agreement finalised in 2010, the two sides agreed to share Teesta water on a fair and equitable basis with the 50:50 water-sharing ratio keeping 20 per cent of the water as environmental flow during the lean season.

India, however, sought to sign an interim agreement on Feni water sharing before signing the Teesta deal.

Bangladesh was seeking signing the two interim instruments together.

The two JRC chapters exchanged data and information on flows for preparing a framework on signing agreement[s] on the sharing of flows of the Manu, Muhuri, Khowai, Gumti, Dharla and Dudhkumar rivers.

India and Bangladesh share 54 trans-boundary rivers of which an agreement has been signed only on the sharing of water of the Ganges.