Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday expressing her anguish for not being included in the water-sharing talks with Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina.
Hasina arrived in India on Saturday to hold bilateral talks. The two prime ministers discussed the conservation and management of River Teesta and the renewal of the 1996 Ganga Water Treaty.
A technical team from India would soon visit Bangladesh for a mega project to conserve and manage waters of the Teesta, PM Modi stated. He had also announced that the two countries would begin technical-level talks for the renewal of the Ganga water treaty.
The two neighbouring countries had signed the Ganges Water Sharing Treaty in 1996 with a provision for both sides to renew it after 30 years.
“l am writing this letter in context of the recent visit of Hon’ble Prime Minister of Bangladesh. It seems that water sharing issues relating to the Ganges and Teesta rivers may have been discussed during the meeting. Such unilateral deliberations and discussions without consultation and the opinion of the state government is neither acceptable nor desirable,” Mamata wrote in a three-page letter.
She further conveyed her “strong reservation” about any discussion on sharing of Teesta water and the Farakka Treaty being taken up with Bangladesh without the involvement of the West Bengal government.
Highlighting the close tie that West Bengal shares with Bangladesh, Mamata said, the people of her state will be the worst sufferers of agreements on water sharing. “I would like to bring to your notice that river morphology has changed in the eastern part of India and Bangladesh over many years which has deprived West Bengal and negatively impacted the water availability in the state,” she added.
Mamata had written to the PM thrice earlier between 2017 and 2022, highlighting how the Farakka Barrage has led to erosion and flooding in her state.
“I am surprised by the fact that no concrete steps have been taken by the Ministry of Jal Shakti to restore the river in its original form and health on the Indian side. Water flow in the Teesta has gone down over the years and it is estimated that, if any water is shared with Bangladesh, lakhs of people in North Bengal will get severely impacted due to inadequate availability of irrigation water. In addition, Teesta water is also needed for meeting drinking water requirements of the residents of North Bengal. It is, therefore, not feasible to share Teesta water with Bangladesh,” she wrote.
In 2011, Mamata had stalled the then Congress-led UPA government’s move to ink a deal with Dhaka on sharing Teesta River water that flows through India and Bangladesh. She backed out from a delegation led by former PM Manmohan Singh that was going to visit Bangladesh, in protest claiming the treaty would impact farmers in West Bengal.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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