Kolkata, May 21,2026: A Bangladeshi delegation flew into the city Wednesday for a meeting of the Joint Rivers Commission and a visit to the Farakka barrage where the flow of the Ganges is measured as it bifurcates into the Bhagirathi-Hooghly to meander towards Kolkata.
The meeting, just months ahead of the expiry of the 30-year Ganges Water Sharing Treaty in December this year, assumes significance as the political discourse in Dhaka over water sharing with India has taken a stormy turn.
Earlier this week, the ruling BNP’s Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir warned that the future of India-Bangladesh relations would depend significantly on the outcome of Ganges negotiations, reflecting his party’s “expectations and needs”.
“India and Bangladesh usually jointly measure water flows at the outset of the dry season. Its an ongoing process. However, what is worrying is this tendency of Bangladeshi leaders to take strong pre-decided stands even before real talks begin on renewing the treaty. It defeats the purpose of negotiations if you start taking rigid postures,” Veena Sikri, former High Commissioner to Bangladesh, told UNI.
The Bangladeshi delegation is being led by Joint Rivers Commission member Md Anwar Kadir and includes senior representatives from Bangladesh’s Water Resources Ministry, Foreign Ministry and hydrological agencies, underlining the importance Dhaka attaches to the upcoming discussions.
While officially the meetings are routine technical consultations, they come at a strategically delicate moment. Officials on both sides have already begun preliminary discussions on renewal. However, analysts suggest that a comprehensive renegotiation may prove difficult under current political circumstances, making a temporary extension a more likely short-term outcome.
Sikri pointed out that the Ganges water treaty “could not be viewed in isolation” and a host of treaties and relations including connectivity and trade needed to be considered in tandem. Indian officials also believe that the Ganges treaty which shared the flow at Farakka headwaters on a 50:50 basis, needs an overhaul as the glacial melt which gives Ganges its waters has reduced even as downstream demand for water has shot up with population exploding on both sides of th border.
Complicating the talks over water are Bangladesh’s growing relationship with China and Pakistan. Even before Alamgir warned India on the Ganges water treaty, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing to formally seek China’s involvement in the Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project, oblivious of Indian sensitivities on handling over such a project just across the border from India’s Siliguri corridor, a narrow strip of Indian land which separates China from Bangladesh.
