India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has termed a recent report on floods in Bangladesh as “misleading” and “ignorant of facts”. Some recent media reports claimed that the current flood situation in Bangladesh was caused by the opening of the gates of the dam on the Gomti river in Tripura. India had earlier termed this news as factually incorrect.
Responding to questions about this in a regular briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, “We have seen the CNN report on the flood situation in Bangladesh. Its narrative is misleading and an attempt has been made to show that India is somehow responsible for the floods. This is factually incorrect and also ignores the facts clarified in the press releases issued by the Government of India.” The spokesperson said that the facts given by the Government of India were ignored in the report.
Randhir Jaiswal also stressed that there is regular and timely exchange of data and critical information through existing joint mechanisms for water resources management between India and Bangladesh. He said, “The report also ignores the fact that effective mechanisms already exist for managing water resources between the two countries, under which we regularly exchange data and critical information.”
This statement has come at a time when India was accused of opening the gates of Farakka Barrage to deal with the flood situation in Bangladesh. However, India has completely rejected this allegation and said that it is contrary to facts. Earlier on August 22, the Ministry of External Affairs had said that floods in the rivers shared between the two countries are a ‘common’ problem, which causes trouble to the people of both sides and close mutual cooperation is required to solve it.
The ministry said, “We have seen concerns being expressed in Bangladesh that the current flood situation in the districts on the eastern border of Bangladesh has been caused by the opening of the gates of the Dumbur Dam located upstream of the Gumti River in Tripura. This is factually not correct.” It said, “We would like to point out that the catchment areas of the Gumti River flowing through India and Bangladesh have received the heaviest rainfall of the year in the last few days.” The Ministry of External Affairs said that the floods in Bangladesh are mainly due to the water from these large catchment areas downstream of the dam. The Dumbur Dam is located more than 120 km from the (Bangladesh) border, the ministry said in a statement.
“It is a low-height dam (about 30 metres) which generates electricity which is fed into the power grid through which Bangladesh also receives 40 MW power from Tripura,” the MEA said. “There are three water-level monitoring stations at Amarpur, Sonamura and Sonamura 2 along the nearly 120-km long river course,” the ministry said. Heavy rains have been continuing across Tripura and adjoining districts of Bangladesh since August 21.
The foreign ministry said water is released automatically when there is excess flow. It said the Amarpur station is part of the bilateral protocol under which real-time flood data is sent to Bangladesh from India. “By 3 pm on August 21, data showing the rising trend of floods was sent to Bangladesh. At 6 pm, there was a power outage due to the floods, which caused communication problems,” it said. “However, we have tried to maintain communication through other means designed for immediate transmission of data,” the ministry said.
The Ministry of External Affairs said the two countries share 54 common trans-border rivers and river-water cooperation is an important part of bilateral engagement. It said, “We are committed to addressing issues and mutual concerns in water resources and river water management through bilateral consultations and technical discussions.”
