Mass mobilisation to secure river-water rights urged

A high-level consultation meeting on river-water rights was held at a local restaurant on Saturday 31 October 2026.

GreenWatch Desk

Political leaders, water experts and activists at a high level consultation meeting in Dhaka on Saturday called for mass mobilisation to create pressure to secure the river-water rights of the people of Bangladesh.

They opined that the government’s approach to renew the Ganges Water Treaty which will expire in December next through expert-level talks would not succeed. Bangladesh should take a multilateral and basin-based strategy to secure water rights of this lowest riparian country which drains all eastern Himalayan rivers but is rendered dry in the lean season causing an environmental catastrophe.

The consultation meeting, organised by the International Farakka Committee (IFC) Bangladesh, was attended by political leaders from Biplabi Worker's Party, Jatiya Party (Kazi Zafar), Nagorik Oikya and Socialist Party of Bangladesh (BSD).

Presided over by Mostafa Kamal Majumder, President, IFC Bangladesh, the programme was addressed by Saiful Huq, General Secretary, BWP, Prof Jasim Uddin Ahmed, chief adviser, IFC Bangladesh, Water expert and former secretary to the government, ANH Akter Hossain, Kazi Md Nahid, secretary general, JP and Shahidullah Koyser, general secretary, Nagorik Oikya among others.

They observed that the government should take knowledgeable and dependable water experts and activists into confidence by taking lessons from late President Ziaur Rahman who had succeeded to lay the basis of a democratic and patriotic water management formula way back in 1977. But his great foundation was subsequently neutralised by those who pursued a subsevient policy.

Take the people into confidence to convey to the world how the great Himalayan rivers are being turned into trickles through unsustainable management at upstreams with irreparable damage to the water courses, the environment and ecosystems, they said.