The friend ship forever how many ways we have to pay for this ever lasting friendship ----------???? Teesta flow all-time low Dhaka presses for JRC meet Mustafizur Rahman Dhaka has intensified its diplomatic efforts for holding a meeting of India-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission without further delay against the backdrop of the lowest ever flow in the trans-boundary river Teesta that has hit hard the country’s north. The JRC meeting could not be held in last four years with India apparently buying time to resolve the Teesta water sharing issue crucial for Bangladesh’s agriculture and ecology, according to officials in Dhaka. Bangladesh has long been pushing for signing the Teesta water sharing deal with India so that its rightful share of water is guaranteed. ‘We have intensified our efforts through the diplomatic channel to create an atmosphere for the next JRC meeting at the ministerial level between Bangladesh and India…We are concerned over the drastic fall in the Teesta water level,’ state minister for water resources Muhammad Nazrul Islam told New Age. He said that foreign secretary Md Shahidul Haque would visit Delhi this week in an effort to ‘ease the deadlock’ and to expedite the process for JRC talks. ‘The Teesta water sharing is an issue of big concern for lower riparian Bangladesh since our agriculture, fisheries and ecology are being seriously affected by the low flow in the Teesta,’ the junior minister added. The foreign secretary is expected to leave Dhaka for New Delhi on Wednesday to speed up Bangladesh efforts to organise the 38th JRC meeting in Dhaka, a senior official confirmed. The 38th JRC meeting, which was scheduled for June 18-19, 2013 with the signing of the Teesta water sharing treaty high on agenda, was postponed at the eleventh hour because of the ‘Indian water resources minister’s inability to attend the bilateral talks in Dhaka. ‘We have readied the technical papers for the JRC meeting. But it now depends on the Indian side when the meeting will take place,’ water resources secretary Zafar Ahmed Khan said. Officials at the water resources ministry and the foreign ministry said that India had been reluctant to sign the Teesta deal that would guarantee the rightful share for Bangladesh and therefore it was delaying the JRC meeting, the officials explained. Bangladesh was now getting only 6.5 per cent of the water as per the historical record of the Teesta flow, according to a JRC Bangladesh official. ‘We have already expressed our concern at the fall in the water level of Teesta at the JRC technical committee meeting in Dhaka on March 8 and demanded our rightful share of water as India is withdrawing water from the upstream unilaterally,’ a senior official noted. JRC Bangladesh member Mir Sazzad Hossain said that signing of the Teesta water sharing treaty would top the agenda of the next JRC meeting. Bangladesh was persistently pressing India for holding the meeting, he added. The Joint Rivers Commission is supposed to meet at least twice a year to resolve bilaterally the issues of common rivers shared by Bangladesh and India, the JRC member added. India and Bangladesh Army earlier exchanged drafts of the interim agreement on the principles of water-sharing of the river Teesta that enters Bangladesh through Nilphamari border and flows across the northern division of Rangpur. Over seven lakh hectares of cultivable land in the country’s north depends on the Teesta water for irrigation during lean seasons. Although the two neighbours share 54 trans-boundary rivers, the countries have an agreement only on the Ganges water sharing. At the last JRC meeting that took place in New Delhi in March 2010, the ministers of the two countries exchanged proposals for the Teesta deal. The technical committee of the two countries finalised the draft deal after a series of meetings. The Teesta water sharing agreement had been put on hold since the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Dhaka in early September 2011 as the West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, had raised objections to the deal and refused to come to Bangladesh with the Indian prime minister at that time. The two countries have, meanwhile, exchanged documents on the history of the Teesta flow and reviewed them for the signing of the treaty both Dhaka and Delhi have agreed on principle. newagebd/detail.php?date=2014-03-18&nid=87066
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 07:28:46 +0000
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