Feni River MoU India – Bangladesh

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The Feni River

Feni is a river in south-eastern Bangladesh.
It is a trans-boundary river which originates in South Tripura district and flows through Sabroom town and then enters Bangladesh.
The river is navigable by small boats as far as Ramgarh in India, about 80 kilometres (50 mi) upstream.

On 6 November 2019, the Union Cabinet approved an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between India and Bangladesh on the withdrawal of 1.82 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of water from the Feni river by India for a drinking water supply scheme for Sabroom town in Tripura.
The approval is ex-post facto, or having retrospective effect, on the MoU that was signed on October 5 between the two countries during Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India.

India and Bangladesh share as many as 54 rivers and there’s only one agreement between them — to share the waters of the Ganga river that was signed in December 1996.
There has been no water-sharing agreement between the countries on the Feni previously.
The question of sharing of the waters of the river between India and Pakistan was first discussed in 1958.
The dispute over the sharing of the river water has been long-standing. It was taken up between India and Pakistan (before the independence of Bangladesh) in 1958.

The MoU stands to benefit Sabroom town on the southern tip of Tripura.
The present supply of drinking water to Sabroom town is inadequate.
The groundwater in this region has high iron content.
Implementation of this scheme would benefit over 7000 population of Sabroom town.

A bridge across the Feni is being built between India and Bangladesh, where the river forms the border between the two countries.
It is expected to be completed by March 2020
It would connect Tripura with Chittagong port in Bangladesh, which is only 70 km away from the Indo-Bangla border.

It would play an important role in the proposed economic corridor through India, Bangladesh, China and Myanmar.
Sabroom is expected to transform into the largest transit hub in the Northeast after the bridge is ready.
India proposes to build a special economic zone (SEZ) in Sabroom that would operate as an export hub.
The SEZ will host rubber-based industries like tyres, textile and apparel industries, bamboo industries, and farm-based processing industries.

Some Bangladeshi experts are worried that if India withdraws more water, it may have an adverse impact on the Muhuri-Feni irrigation project that provides water to some 230 hectares of land.
There have been earlier concerns that India was lifting water via small pumps from Feni to irrigate farms

It is well known that concentrated industrial clusters like an SEZ can have a significant ecological impact, particularly on patterns of water use.

The Feni water-sharing pact has raised heckles in Bangladesh.
It was highlighted by the brutal murder of Abrar Fahad, a secondyear student of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), the country’s top university.
His murderers were allegedly members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of Bangladesh’s ruling political party, the Awami League.
The attack was triggered by his Facebook post criticising recent deals with India, including water sharing with Bangladesh.

The signing of a treaty on the Teesta waters is still in abeyance after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee last-minute objections scuttled the signing of an agreement in 2011.
On assuming power in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured the Bangladesh government that the deal would be initialled before his first term expired.
However, Mamata Banerjee remains unwilling to be a party to the deal.

In August 2019, India and Bangladesh held a water secretarylevel meeting of the Joint Rivers Commission (JRC) in Dhaka.
It was agreed to collect data and prepare water-sharing agreements for seven rivers — Manu, Muhuri, Khowai, Gumti, Dharla, Dudhkumar, and Feni.