Dhaka has yet to receive any reply that it sought to know over two weeks back from New Delhi about India’s fresh plan to divert water from the trans-boundary River Teesta.
India has a plan to dig two more canals upstream in the state of West Bengal to divert the common river water, according to the Indian media reports.
‘We have not got any reply from Delhi on their new plan to divert water from Teesta,’ foreign ministry spokesperson Seheli Sabrin told the weekly media briefing at the ministry on Thursday.
On March 19, foreign secretary Masud Bin Momen said that they had sent a note verbale to New Delhi seeking to know India’s plan for diverting water from the trans-boundary river.
The Teesta, once a mighty river flowing from the Himalayan glaciers, now mostly runs like a stream in Bangladesh in the lean period and overflows during monsoon, which causes frequent floods in the northern region.
The new project on the common river upstream in India would further reduce its flow, experts in water resources fear.
Bangladesh has been waiting for decades for a water-sharing treaty to be signed with India over the River Teesta.
But West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee opposed such a deal in 2011, citing the need for water for farmers in the Indian state.
Expressing concern over India’s fresh plan to divert the Teesta water, state minister for water resources Zaheed Farooque on March 16 said that Bangladesh, which shared at least 54 rivers as a lower riparian country with India, knew nothing officially about the pan to divert more water from the common river unilaterally.
He said that such a move to divert water from the Teesta River would be alarming for Bangladesh.
River researchers feared that the decision of West Bengal to dig two more canals to divert water from Teesta would badly affect the lives and livelihoods of about two crore people in Bangladesh’s north.
Water Development Board officials said that four canals were arbitrarily withdrawing water from Teesta in West Bengal before the latest announcement of digging two more canals from the Indian state government to serve about one lakh farmers in Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar.
According to the Indian media reports, there are 42 dams built on the river starting from Sikkim.
The Teesta flows some 115 kilometres inside Bangladesh, according to the WDB, including 13kms upstream from the Teesta Barrage built by Bangladesh in Lalmonirhat.Delhi has no immediate response to Dhaka's note verbale
