Opening of the dam is not the cause of floods in Bangladesh, claims India

Severe floods have occurred in Feni, Noakhali, Comilla and Moulvibazar in Bangladesh. The houses and crops of millions of people have been submerged in the flood water. In this situation, the Ministry of External Affairs of India issued a press release.

According to the notification, there was no flood situation in Bangladesh due to the release of water from the Indian dam in Tripura's Gomti river.
We have seen concern expressed in Bangladesh that the opening of the Dambur Dam upstream of the Gomti River in Tripura has led to the current situation of flooding in the eastern border districts of Bangladesh. Actually it is not correct.
It also said that we would like to mention that the catchment area of ​​Gomti river flowing through India and Bangladesh has received the highest rainfall of this year for the past few days. These floods in Bangladesh are mainly caused by water from this large catchment downstream of the dam.

Dambur Dam is located quite far from the border - more than 120 km upstream from Bangladesh. It is a low-rise (about 30 m) dam, which generates electricity and sends it to a grid from which Bangladesh also receives 40 MW of electricity from Tripura. We have water level monitoring sites at Amarpur, Sonamura and Sonamura 2 along this nearly 120 km stretch of river.

Heavy rains have continued since August 21 in entire Tripura and neighboring districts of Bangladesh.

In this event of heavy flow, spontaneous release of water was observed. The Amarpur station is part of a bilateral protocol under which we are transmitting real-time flood information to Bangladesh.
The notification further stated that an increasing trend was observed in the data provided in Bangladesh till 3 PM on 21/08/2024. At 6 p.m., due to flooding, power outages caused communication problems. Nevertheless, we have tried to maintain communication through other means designed to send information on an urgent basis.

Flooding in common rivers between India and Bangladesh is a joint problem. which causes suffering to the people on both sides and requires close mutual cooperation to resolve it. As the two countries share 54 common transboundary rivers, river water cooperation is an important part of our bilateral engagement. We are committed to addressing water resources and river water management issues and mutual concerns through bilateral consultations and technical discussions.