India rejects Bangladesh Media's Tripura Dam flood claims

Story by ATV | Posted by Vidushi Gaur | Date 22-08-2024

Flood-affected people being moved to a safer place during a rescue operation

New Delhi

Amid reports in Bangladesh dailies that the current flood situation in the neighboring country has been caused by the opening of the Dumbur dam upstream of the Gumti River in Tripura, India on Thursday pointed out that the flood is not because of the release of water from the Tripura dam.

"We have seen concerns being expressed in Bangladesh that the current situation of flood in districts on the eastern borders of Bangladesh has been caused by the opening of the Dumbur dam upstream of the Gumti River in Tripura. This is factually not correct," the MEA said in a statement.

"The flood in Bangladesh is primarily due to waters from these large catchments downstream of the dam," it said.

The MEA released the following statement on X:

Flood situation in Bangladesh not due to release of waters from Indian dam on Gumti River, Tripura:https://t.co/8hcnRkoBF1 pic.twitter.com/p5zY0LII7D

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) August 22, 2024

Explaining that floods on the common rivers between India and Bangladesh are a shared problem inflicting suffering on people on both sides, India pressed for close mutual cooperation towards resolving them.

The MEA said, "As the two nations share 54 common cross-border rivers, river water cooperation is an important part of our bilateral engagement. and we remain committed to resolving issues and mutual concerns in water resources and river water management through bilateral consultations and technical discussions."

The Dumbur dam is located quite far from the border - over 120 Km upstream of Bangladesh. It is a low height (about 30m) dam that generates power that feeds into a grid and from which Bangladesh also draws 40MW power from Tripura.

"Along the about 120 Km river course, we have three water level observation sites at Amarpur, Sonamura, and Sonamura 2," it said.

Since August 21, Tripura and adjoining districts of Bangladesh have been recording heavy rainfall leading to automatic releases.

Under a bilateral protocol, Amarpur station transmits real-time flood data to Bangladesh which shows a rising trend has been supplied to Bangladesh up to 1500 hrs on August 21.

Due to flooding, there was a power outage leading to problems of communication at 1800 hours, it was maintained through other means created for urgent transmission of data.