The Bangladesh-India Joint Rivers Commission on Thursday finalised the text of MoU for interim water sharing of Kushiyara River. The Kushiyara water-sharing agreement is likely to be signed during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to New Delhi on September 6-7. Bangladesh brought up the issue of using water from the Kushiyara to irrigate 5,000 hectares of farmland. At the meeting, held after 12 long years, the Bangladesh delegation also expressed its concern over the delay in signing the Teesta water-sharing treaty.
India’s water resources minister, Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, assured that the Teesta water treaty issue was under their active consideration when his Bangladesh counterpart Zaheed Farooque led the 17-member delegation. The meeting also agreed to widen the area of the ongoing cooperation by including eight more rivers for data exchange. The matter will be further discussed at the JRC Technical Level Committee, likely to be held this year in Dhaka.
The Joint Rivers Commission has not been much effective in resolving the issues of water sharing of transboundary rivers due to a lack of commitment from India and also for Bangladesh’s technical incapacity to be persuasive. Even though the two neighbours share 54 rivers, and the JRC has been working since 1972, only one water-sharing deal – the Ganges — was signed, and that too, two and a half decades ago. That treaty is set to expire in 2026.
The JRC had finalised the agreement for sharing the water of the Teesta in 2010, but the deal was torpedoed by West Bengal, stalling the minister-level JRC talks for 12 years. The JRC has now become a consultation platform and it does not have any executive power. It cannot take charge. Activists and environmentalists alleged that India had built dams unilaterally on almost all transboundary rivers and diverted water without Bangladesh’s consent. JRC has no ability to take any decision. It is apprehended that JRC is the rubber stamp of making India’s unilateral water withdrawal valid.
