11-member Bangladesh team to travel to India for joint meeting regarding Ganga Water Treaty

Dhaka: An 11-member Bangladeshi delegation will travel to India on Monday for a meeting regarding the Ganga Water Treaty, which is due for renewal in 2026.

India and Bangladesh are set to hold the 86th meeting of the joint committee of technical experts next week regarding the renewal of the 30-year-old treaty for sharing the waters of the trans-boundary river.

“The Bangladeshi delegation, led by Muhammad Abul Hossen, member of the Joint River Commission (JRC), will reach Kolkata on March 3 and immediately leave on a two-day visit to the joint observation site on the Ganges at Farakka until the morning of March 5,” The Daily Star newspaper said here on Saturday.

The delegation will return to Kolkata for a two-day meeting under the aegis of the India-Bangladesh Joint River Commission on March 6-7, according to a letter written by R R Sambharia, senior joint commissioner (FM).

Abul Hossen told the newspaper that the joint river commission sits once a year to discuss the cross-boundary river.

According to the Ministry of Jal Shakti, India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers. The Joint Rivers Commission of India and Bangladesh was constituted in 1972 as a bilateral mechanism to address issues of mutual interest on common / border / trans-boundary rivers.

The Ganga Water Treaty was signed on December 12, 1996 by the then Indian Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina.

During Hasina's last visit to India in June – weeks before her regime was toppled in August 2024 – the two sides announced that technical negotiations had begun for the renewal of the 1996 Treaty.