Dhaka-Delhi JRC meeting postponed

The meeting of Joint Rivers Commission of Bangladesh with India over updating data on six common rivers scheduled for tomorrow has been postponed.

“We will re-fix a new date for the meeting later,” KM Anwar Hossain, a JRC member, told The Daily Star this evening.

After 34 years, the two-day meeting the JRC was scheduled to be held in Delhi tomorrow to discuss a framework on sharing the waters of the six common rivers.

The six common rivers include the Muhuri, Monu, Dharla, Khowai, Gumti and Dudhkumar.

Earlier, water sharing agreements of two rivers -- the Teesta and Feni -- were finalised in 2011, but no agreement was signed at that time.

Every year in March, the Muhuri river in Parshuram of Feni becomes bone dry as the water flow goes down to only 75 cusecs (cubic feet per second), while in May the flow of Monu river in Sylhet goes down to 205 cusecs due to withdrawal of water from the upstream in India.

This is ten times lower than what the rivers usually have.

Like these two rivers, Bangladesh and India have 54 common rivers.  However, the two countries have only one relevant treaty signed in 1996 which oversees the sharing of water of the Ganges river.

Dhaka and New Delhi first exchanged river flow data of these six rivers in 1985.

Since then, the two countries have discussed the issue of sharing water from the six rivers mentioned, but they could not reach any consensus.

According to the latest flow chart, the water flow of the Khowai river goes down to 378 cusecs in March, the Gumti river to 507 cusecs, Dharla to 2,253 cusecs and Dudhkumar to 2,591 cusecs, all due to withdrawal of water from the upstream. During the monsoon season, the water level increases much higher.

JRC sources also said Bangladesh got 68,000 cusecs less water in the first two months of the lean period of January and February this year than what it should have gotten as per the Ganges Water Treaty 1996.

Bangladesh and India share a total of 54 transboundary rivers. The JRC was formed to resolve conflicts about sharing of waters of those trans-boundary rivers.