Mamata’s Intractable Opposition Nixes Efforts For A Pact. Bangladesh could be ready to revisit the Teesta water treaty’s terms as the ruling Awami League faces growing political heat but Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee’s intractable opposition is stalemating all efforts to ink the pact.

Boston-based Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia has observed that India must consult with co-riparian countries for any project on shared rivers.
The Alliance formed in 1993, came up with the remarks at a meeting held recently at MIT, Cambridge, USA to discuss India's recently revived River Linking Project, according to a message received here.

With power in India shifting to the states due to an increasingly weak central government, secretary of state Hillary Clinton chose Kolkata as the first stop of her India tour to advance US foreign-policy interests. In a televised interview before meeting with West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Clinton pushed for India permitting foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail and for an “amicable” water-sharing arrangement with Bangladesh on the Teesta River — issues stalled by Banerjee’s opposition.

New Delhi: India-Bangladesh relations “will take a huge hit”, if India cannot deliver on the Teesta agreement, says Dipu Moni, foreign minister of Bangladesh. In an exclusive conversation with ToI, Moni, who is in India for the first joint consultative committee meeting with foreign minister S M Krishna, said, “on Teesta there is a huge expectation in Bangladesh. I think if India cannot deliver on that expectation, our relations will take a huge hit. I'm not sure our relationship can afford it. I believe people's representatives understand this. They will do what is right.

New Delhi: India is still trying to build a “political consensus” over the issue of Teesta water-sharing pact with Bangladesh. The first joint consultative commission meeting, co-chaired by foreign minister S M Krishna and his Bangladeshi counterpart Dipu Moni, on Monday saw Dhaka insisting on early signing of the pact, which has remained hostage to West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee’s recalcitrance.

India on Monday assured Bangladesh that the government was working “very hard” to develop “political consensus” on two bilateral agreements — the Teesta water-sharing treaty and the land boundary pact — but did not commit to a time-frame, sources told The Indian Express on Monday. A worried Bangladesh government has been pressing for an early signing of the Teesta water-sharing pact, since it is a very emotive issue in the country. And the Sheikh Hasina government has also requested New Delhi to ratify the land boundary agreement in Parliament that was signed in September 2011.

Ignoring the crucial linkages of a river’s upstream, midstream, and downstream flows can endanger not just the river, but human communities and ecology sustained by it. A disregard of ‘environmental flows,’ by construction of dams, has already harmed many rivers in the Western Ghats, giving rise to political as well as environmental issues.

Environmentalists yesterday demanded the government's immediate and firm steps to stop India's National River Linking Project for the sake of Bangladesh's existence.

They were addressing a rally organised by Green Voice, an organisation of young environmentalists, marking its seventh anniversary and Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's visit to Bangladesh from May 5 to 6, before the capital's Jatiya Press Club.

The State government was resorting to “jugglery of words” when speaking about the Netravati diversion project and the Yettinahole project, member of the Western Ghats Task Force B.M. Kumaraswamy said here on Wednesday.

Speaking to The Hindu here on the sidelines of a programme organised by the task force and the Department of Forests, Mr. Kumaraswamy said the government was denying that there was any attempt to divert the Netravati, and instead it was saying that it would supply drinking water to Kolar, Chickballapur, Chitradurga and Bangalore Rural districts from the Yettinahole, a tributary of the Netravati, he said.

The State government has planned to carry out six projects of inter-linking of rivers in the State at a total cost of Rs. 9,015 crore as part of its efforts to achieve optimal utilisation of water resources.

Stating this while initiating a debate in the Assembly on the demands for grants of the Public Works Department, PWD Minister K.V. Ramalingam explained the rationale behind the formulation of the projects.