DHAKA: Bangladesh said on Tuesday it had protested to India about falling water levels in the Ganges river, despite a treaty meant to regulate the downstream flow into the delta nation.

Water is vital for Bangladesh’s agricultural-based economy and has been a key issue between the two nations for decades.

“We received the lowest ever water flow in the last 10 days of February,” Mir Sajjad Hossain, a director of the Bangladesh government’s Joint Rivers Commission, told AFP.

“We protested it to India and asked them to ensure flow as per the Ganges Water Sharing treaty but they said it was due to lack of rains in the upstream areas,” he said.

In summer Bangladesh is frequently flooded by monsoon rains and melted snow from the Himalayas. Under an 1996 agreement downstream Bangladesh was supposed to get a fixed minimum amount of water from the river.

Hossain said, however, that in the last 10 days of Feb the water measured had fallen by a third below the guaranteed amount.

“During this time Bangladesh measured only 26,783 cusecs (a unit measuring water discharged from dams) against the 39,106 cusecs there is supposed to be,” he said.

Experts say reduced flow in the Bangladesh part of the Ganges is due to Indian dams supplying water to farmers for irrigation.

“The situation has become so bad in the northern and western parts of the country that there is hardly any water in the rivers during the dry season,” said Ainun Nishat, a former professor of hydrology.

Farming and the environment are affected directly by low water flows in the Ganges, known as the Padma in Bangladesh, and in another important river, the Teesta, whose flow has become a trickle due to unprecedented water withdrawal by India, he added.—AFP