The government’s announcement that the thorny Teesta river water sharing issue will not be part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agenda when he visits Dhaka on June 6 will come as a huge disappointment for Bangladesh. After Parliament ratified the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement, which paved the way for the historic exchange of enclaves and territories in adverse possession between India and Bangladesh, Dhaka was upbeat that a pact on Teesta river water sharing would be inked during Modi’s two-day visit. But an invisible dam seems to have come up, stalling, for the second time in four years, a deal on a 50-50 sharing of the waters of Teesta that originates in Sikkim and runs through north Bengal before flowing into the Yamuna in Bangladesh.
In 2011, when the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was all set to sign the Teesta agreement with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, into her second year in government, threw a spanner in the UPA’s works.
By a sleight of hand, she scuppered the deal-to-be getting two surveys conducted on the the volume of water in the Teesta.