Payback Time: Bangladesh Wants Teesta Water Treaty For Backing India Against Pakistan On Terror

Bangladesh, which backed India against Pakistan on terror and pulled out of the SAARC summit that was scheduled to be held at Islamabad, will ask New Delhi to finalise the Teesta Treaty as a return favour. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed will raise this issue when she meets Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BRICS summit in Goa on 16 October.

The proposed agreement over sharing the waters of the Teesta river has been hanging fire since 2011, when West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee scuttled it by not accompanying the then prime minister Manmohan Singh to Dhaka, where the two sides were slated to ink the deal. Since water is a state subject, Singh could not go ahead and sign the agreement.

Banerjee fears that committing a fair share of waters of the Teesta to Bangladesh would starve farmlands in North Bengal. But Bangladesh has repeatedly pointed out that it has rights to the Teesta waters as a lower riparian state.

However, during her visit to Dhaka in Febraury last year and again with Modi in June 2015, Banerjee indicated that she was amenable to a fair water sharing with Bangladesh.

Bangladesh has also held out the prospects of granting more transit facilities to India if the Teesta deal is signed early.