Factually incorrect: India rejects Bangladesh media reports' claims of floods due to Tripura dam

New Delhi Aug 22 (IANS) Amid reports in Bangladesh dailies that current flood situation in the neighbouring country has been caused by opening of the Dumbur dam upstream of the Gumti River in Tripura, India on Thursday pointed out that the flood is not because of release of water from 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 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.

Explaining that floods on the common rivers between India and Bangladesh are a shared problem inflicting sufferings to 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 recoding heavy rainfall leading to automatic releases.

Under a bilateral protocol, Amarpur station transmits realtime flood data to Bangladesh which showed rising trend has been supplied to Bangladesh upto 1500 hrs on August 21.

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

--IANS

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