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Bangladesh’s Ganges Water Sharing Treaty with India expires on 12 December. Dhaka says its negotiating team is ready. New Delhi says technical discussions have continued through existing bilateral mechanisms. What remains missing publicly is a timetable for concluding a successor agreement before the next dry season.
Bangladesh has also stated what it wants: a fresh agreement with guarantee clauses protecting its dry-season share, rather than simply renewing the existing treaty. Water Resources Minister Shahiduddin Chowdhury Anee outlined that position in September.
The question is whether negotiations will produce stronger protection during shortages, and what happens if December arrives without a deal.
The Agreement at a Glance
- Sheikh Hasina and Indian Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda signed the treaty on 12 December 1996.
- It runs for 30 years, with renewal requiring mutual consent.
- It divides water at Farakka into ten-day periods between January and May.
- It provides joint monitoring and a process for resolving disputes.
At a water seminar on 8 October, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humaiun Kobir stressed the need for sincerity at the political and official levels, alongside dialogue and diplomacy, in resolving shared-water issues.
Sincerity matters. But a treaty with a fixed expiry date also requires a negotiating calendar, clear objectives and a contingency plan.
Present Situation: Dhaka says it is ready.
Bangladesh has formed its committee and asked India to nominate representatives, Kobir said at the Bay of Bengal Conversation. “Our committee is ready. We are just waiting for the final response from our Indian counterparts,” The Daily Star reported in an article updated on 6 October.
India’s public response has not been limited to its August briefing. On 29 September, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal reiterated that river-sharing matters would be discussed through the Joint Rivers Commission and said technical-level meetings concerning the Ganges treaty had continued. No timetable for completing a successor agreement was disclosed in that response.
Technical meetings, however, are not necessarily negotiations over new guarantees. Nor do they amount to political approval of a final agreement.
Dhaka should explain whether it has submitted the proposed treaty provisions, what its guarantee demands cover, and whether an interim arrangement is being discussed.
Context: What does the treaty actually protect?
The treaty’s allocation formula depends on the available flow at Farakka. A cusec means one cubic foot of water per second.
When the flow is 70,000 cusecs or less, each country receives half of the flow. Between 70,000 and 75,000 cusecs, Bangladesh receives 35,000 cusecs and India receives the remainder. Above 75,000 cusecs, India receives 40,000 cusecs and Bangladesh the remainder.
The treaty also guarantees each country 35,000 cusecs in three alternating ten-day periods between 11 March and 10 May. But when total flow falls below 50,000 cusecs, it requires immediate consultations for emergency adjustments rather than specifying a separate minimum allocation for that situation.
Article XI provides another safeguard: during the treaty’s term, India must release at least 90% of Bangladesh’s formula-based share when reviews have not produced mutually agreed adjustments. This is a review-related protection, not an unconditional drought minimum.
The treaty, therefore, contains guarantees. The concern is whether they adequately protect Bangladesh during severe shortages.
The downstream stakes are concrete. Research links reduced dry-season flow in the Gorai, a Ganges distributary, to increased salinity in southwestern Bangladesh, affecting agriculture and drinking-water supplies. An allocation at Farakka is therefore not merely a diplomatic figure; the wider river system carries consequences for downstream communities.
The 1977 Agreement
The five-year agreement signed in 1977, during Ziaur Rahman’s presidency, contained a different safeguard against shortages. If falling flows reduced Bangladesh’s share below 80% of its scheduled allocation for a ten-day period, releases to Bangladesh could not fall below that threshold.
The 1996 treaty did not retain that particular provision. Its guarantees and Article XI safeguard should not be confused with the earlier shortage floor.
Joint monitoring remains important, but monitoring is not enforcement. Under the current treaty, unresolved disputes escalate from the Joint Committee to the Joint Rivers Commission and then to the governments. There is no independent adjudication mechanism.
A stronger agreement must therefore be judged by how it handles shortages and unresolved disputes, not simply its headline allocation figures.
BNP’s River Promises Now Facing A Governing Test?
BNP’s election manifesto promised effective measures to secure Bangladesh’s fair share from common rivers, specifically mentioning the Teesta and Padma. It framed foreign policy around “Friend Yes, Master No.
Ganges and Teesta negotiations are separate, but the accountability principle connects them: fair access must become a negotiated outcome rather than remain a campaign promise. BNP must now show what guarantees it is seeking, how negotiations are progressing, and what will protect Bangladesh’s interests if the deadline passes without an agreement.
Expiry does not mean water releases will automatically stop. But the treaty provides no automatic continuation: renewal requires mutual consent, and Article XI’s safeguard applies during its term.
The immediate question is what agreed framework will govern the next January–May sharing season if no successor treaty or interim extension is concluded.
Bangladesh does not need to disclose every bargaining position. But the public deserves to know what protection its government is seeking, when negotiations will move forward, and what arrangement will govern the next dry season if no deal is reached. Sincerity can open the conversation. It cannot replace rules for sharing water when supplies run low.