The issue of Teesta water sharing will remain on the back-foot until May, and talks might progress later, what the government of Bangladesh has hinted.
“Nothing new can be done until the election in India is over,” Foreign Minister Abul Hasan Mahmud Ali said in the capital on Saturday morning.
“We have to wait until the national election in India is ended,” he said. “Talks will resume after a new government comes to power after the poll.”
However, talks on this issue are underway, the minister said. “A technical delegation will soon arrive from India to assess the waters of the Teesta.”
However, the minister did not specify as to when the delegation will arrive. He was speaking at a programme in the Bangla Academy in Dhaka.
India and Bangladesh were close to ink an interim deal on Teesta water sharing during Indian premier Manmohan Singh’s Dhaka visit in September 2011.
However, the agreement was stalled in face of stiff resistance from Kolkata Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Reports have been running lately in the media on the decreasing waters of the Teesta river, affecting farmers in the irrigation process.
However, apparently sufferings of Bangladesh will come second to the national election of India, what is scheduled to take place during April-May of this year.
Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud, who did not talk to Delhi since his position as minister in January, had also said Teesta will wait until May.