India says the Ganges water-sharing treaty with Bangladesh will be discussed in the two countries' Joint Rivers Commission, and that talks are going on at technical level. Foreign ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said so in reply to a question at the regular briefing in New Delhi on Tuesday, 29 September, Channel i Online reports.
Jaiswal said the Joint Rivers Commission exists to discuss all rivers that flow between the two countries, not only the Ganges, and all river matters will be discussed there. Technical-level meetings on the Ganges treaty are being held, he added.
Bangladesh's water resources minister, Md Shahid Uddin Chowdhury Annie, had earlier told reporters in Dhaka that Bangladesh wants a new treaty under which the two countries share the water equally according to availability, and that a guarantee clause must be included to protect the country's interests.
The Ganges water-sharing treaty was signed on 12 December 1996 for 30 years and expires on 12 December this year. Diplomatic sources in Dhaka quoted in the report say Bangladesh has formed a technical committee and told India several times since June that it wants talks, without a response from Delhi.
In the dry season the Ganges flow that passes Farakka feeds the Padma and its distributaries, on which irrigation, fisheries and river navigability in Bangladesh's south-west depend, so talks on a new treaty before the old one lapses are being watched closely.
Asked at the same briefing whether India's national security adviser Ajit Doval had recently visited Dhaka, Jaiswal said he had no information on that.
Photo: Debmalyap / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Channel i Online
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