The minister for water resources, Anisul Islam Mahmud, on Wednesday said the proposed project of construction of Ganges Barrage at Pangsa in Rajbari has been abandoned.
‘A high-powered technical committee would be formed soon to find out other options so that we can ensure optimum utilisation of waters we are receiving under Ganges treaty with India,’ he said at a press conference at Bangladesh Secretariat after a meeting with Chinese delegation led by water resources minister of China.
Anisul came up with the announcement a day after prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday said that she had rejected proposal of the Ganges Barrage construction project as considering it a ‘suicidal’ project like the Teesta Barrage.
At a press conference at Ganabhaban on her four-day visit to India, she said that the barrage would be constructed jointly by Bangladesh and India and that too as per her instruction across a tributary of the Ganges River to set up a reservoir to preserve monsoon water for lean period.
She said that she had already cancelled the design of the proposed Ganges Barrage in Rajbari and its feasibility study as they were faulty and asked India and officials concerned to look for the site of the barrage over a tributary of the cross-boundary river.
The government earlier planned the construction of the Ganges Barrage at Pangsha between 2014 and 2020 at a cost of $4 billion. The construction cost already escalated to $5 billion as the government was awaiting India’s consent for it, said water resources ministry officials.
Bangladesh was keen to build the barrage with Indian cooperation mainly to check intrusion of salinity and supply waters for irrigation in the country’s south-western region.
The barrage would also protect the biodiversity of the Sunderbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, according to project documents.
A Chinese state-run firm, appointed over three is carrying out detailed technical and financial feasibility studies, the officials said.
Earlier, the government carried out feasibility studies on the Ganges Barrage project on its own, they said.
The officials said that the construction of the barrage awaited ‘clearance’ from New Delhi, which sought a detailed feasibility study report on the planned barrage.
In her three-point directive prime minister Sheikh Hasina announced in April 2015 that the Ganges Barrage would be a joint Bangladesh-India project to ensure uninterrupted natural flows of the Ganges-Padma in Bangladesh.
In April 1975, India commissioned the Farakka Barrage to divert Ganges waters for flushing the Kolkata port.
India’s withdrawal of Ganges waters from the upstream using the Farakka Barrage drastically reduced the river’s water flows into lower riparian Bangladesh adversely affecting its agriculture, fishery, forestry, navigation as well as industrial growth.
Salinity intrusion deep inside Bangladesh due to the low flow in the Ganges poses threat to the biodiversity of the Sunderbans, a World Heritage Site.
Source: New Age
