India-Bangladesh Ganga water treaty renewal in doubt as December deadline nears

New Delhi: The chances of the Indo-Bangladesh Ganga water Treaty getting automatically renewed next month are growing slimmer by the day, with no clarity yet on Bangladesh PM Tarique Rahman's India visit, ET has learnt.

Significant changes to the treaty terms, including a much shorter tenure, are also being considered, it is learnt. The 30-year-old treaty, signed in 1996, will lapse on December 12.

India is unlikely to renew the treaty automatically without a visit by Rahman, sources indicated.


The treaty is crucial as it manages the sharing of the Ganges River waters with Bangladesh during the lean season from January 1 to May 31 every year - controlled through the water flow from Farakka Barrage in Murshidabad West Bengal- just 20 kms upstream of Bangladesh.

However, several Indian stakeholders have sought that the treaty be renegotiated to adequately address sharply increasing demand for fresh water from Bihar to West Bengal besides growing industrial needs and thermal power plants.

Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Chaudhary on Friday stressed that the state's interests must be protected before the international treaty with Bangladesh is renewed.

There are also calls for modifying the treaty to bring in a more comprehensive river basin approach that addresses concerns like heavy siltation around the Farakka barrage that impacts water flow in adjoining areas.

The treaty, however, is a political hot button issue in Bangladesh.

The ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has been pitching that the 'minimum guarantee' clause of the 1977 bilateral agreement - which ensured Bangladesh got 80% of its scheduled water allocation in the lean period - be restored.

It further argues that the 1996 Treaty framework inked under the Sheikh Hasina led Awami League does not protect Bangladesh's agricultural interests adequately and there is a need to break from this template.

The 1996 treaty allows for 50:50 water sharing between the two countries when water flow drops to 70,000 cusecs or less while when it drops even below 70,000, Bangladesh gets a fixed 35,000 cusecs. In effect, both countries are guaranteed 35,000 cusecs of water in alternating three 10-day periods between March 11 and May 10 every year.

However, with the kind of changes being sought by the BNP in Bangladesh and the sharply increasing water demand within India, the continuation of the treaty in existing form has become challenging.

Much hinges now on the Bangladesh PM's visit.

Since his election early this year, there were at least four occasions when PM Tarique Rahman's visit was planned but a section of establishment in Dhaka sabotaged the plan on the pretext of Sheikh Hasina's extradition. The radical Jamaat-e-Islami has been trying to influence Rahman government's India policy and pushing for an anti-India narrative. A section of the establishment in Dhaka has raised anti-India rhetoric, forcing the PM to go slow while engaging with New Delhi. There's desperation in some quarters in Dhaka about Rahman's visit focusing Ganges Treaty renewal.