Summary
The 1996 India-Bangladesh Ganga Water Treaty, which governs lean-season sharing at the Farakka Barrage, expires in December 2026. Manjur A. Chowdhury, former Chairman of Bangladesh's National River Conservation Commission, has called the treaty flawed.
He says it has no guarantee clause, no ecological flow provision and nothing on climate change. He proposes a three-year bridging treaty, followed by a lasting trilateral pact that includes Nepal. Farooq Sobhan, the former Bangladesh Foreign Secretary who negotiated the 1996 treaty, says India promised a barrage on the Padma in return for leaving out an arbitration clause and that the barrage was never built.
In India, JD(U) MP Sanjay Jha has urged the government not to renew the treaty, arguing it has harmed Bihar. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has replied that the Jal Shakti Ministry has led inter-ministerial consultations on the treaty's future.
WHY IT MATTERS FOR UPSC & STATE PCS
On October 6, 2026, Manjur A. Chowdhury told The Hindu that the treaty should be replaced. He had made similar remarks at a conclave in Dhaka the day before. His proposal is a three-year interim treaty, then a lasting trilateral agreement with Nepal.
Farooq Sobhan's remarks reopened the old dispute over the missing arbitration clause and the unbuilt Padma barrage. Renewal discussions are under way in both countries, but key technical consultations are still pending ahead of the December expiry.
In India, Sanjay Jha's call not to renew and Jaishankar's August 28 letter in reply, have made renewal a domestic political question as well as a diplomatic one.
Standard News
A BRIDGE IS ONLY USEFUL IF INDIA DECIDES WHERE IT LEADS
Read the renewal debate as a list of complaints about a 30-year-old treaty and the negotiation stops making sense. India is bargaining on two fronts at once. Every concession it makes to Dhaka is something it must then defend in Patna and the reverse is also true.
The interest map Dhaka, the lower riparian, wants enforceability.
- Manjur A. Chowdhury's complaints (no guarantee clause, no ecological flows, no climate provisions) are really one complaint. The treaty divides whatever water reaches Farakka, but promises Bangladesh nothing when there is very little to divide.
- The text bears this out. Below 50,000 cusecs, India owes only emergency consultation, not a quantity of water.
- Farooq Sobhan adds a further claim. He says the arbitration clause was left out in 1996 in exchange for an Indian promise of a Padma barrage, which was never built. Whether or not one accepts his account, its purpose is clear: to recast the renewal as settling an old debt, not as a fresh concession by India. Bihar wants renewal to stop being automatic.
- Sanjay Jha's objection is that the treaty has harmed Bihar. The grounding attributes Bihar's longstanding complaint to siltation and flooding upstream of Farakka.
- For New Delhi, this is a coalition partner, not a pressure group, which is why it drew a written reply from the External Affairs Minister. New Delhi wants continuity without new obligations.
- India's water diplomacy with its neighbours has preferred bilateral deals without third-party adjudication. The 1996 treaty, with no arbitration clause, fits that pattern.
Why Nepal cuts both ways Bringing in Nepal sounds technical, but it is strategic.
In India's favour:
- The lean-season flow partly comes from Nepal's Ghaghara, Gandaki and Koshi.
- A basin framework could make upstream storage and flood control legitimate subjects of negotiation. These are the same issues behind Bihar's grievance.
- So a trilateral table could serve India's domestic interest as well as Bangladesh's.
Against India's interest:
- A three-party framework ends India's bilateral control over the agenda.
- It gives two smaller neighbours a shared platform.
- It makes upstream decisions that India now takes alone subject to negotiation. There is also a credibility problem. India itself has sought changes to the Indus Waters Treaty on grounds of changed circumstances. It will find it hard to tell Dhaka that 1996 assumptions about flow and climate cannot be reopened.
Where the
balance sits A three-year bridging treaty is the most sensible option on the table. It avoids a legal gap in December and gives Bihar's concerns time to be heard. But it helps India only if New Delhi uses those three years to draft the basin framework itself. That means deciding the scope, the data-sharing rules and the method for setting ecological flows.
If India waits, the bridge becomes a countdown on Dhaka's terms, with Nepal and Bangladesh negotiating together.
Quick Facts
Key numbers & takeaways — revise these first
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The Ganga Water Treaty between India and Bangladesh was signed on 12 December 1996 for 30 years.
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It shares lean-season Ganga flows at the Farakka Barrage from 1 January to 31 May, in 10-day periods.
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If the flow at Farakka falls below 50,000 cusecs in any 10-day period, the two governments must hold emergency consultations.
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This is a consultation duty, not a guaranteed quantity.
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In the critical March to May window, each country gets a guaranteed 35,000 cusecs in alternating 10-day periods.
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The treaty provides for review every five years.
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The Farakka Barrage, commissioned in 1975, diverts water into the Hooghly to keep Kolkata port navigable.
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The Ganga is called the Padma in Bangladesh.
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Nepal's Ghaghara, Gandaki and Koshi feed Himalayan snowmelt into the Ganga during the lean months.
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The treaty expires in December 2026.
Connect the dots for your UPSC preparation.
Standard news covers the event. Log in to read our comprehensive analysis and uncover the hidden constitutional, structural, and ethical dimensions of this topic:
A clause-by-clause reading of where the 1996 treaty does and does not guarantee Bangladesh water and why the 50,000-cusec consultation clause is the real weak point.
The four-way interest map (Dhaka, Patna, Kolkata and Kathmandu) showing what each actor needs and cannot publicly concede.
Why India's own Indus Waters Treaty argument limits what it can say against reopening the Ganga treaty.
A sequenced plan for using a three-year bridging treaty to build a basin framework on India's terms.
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