Tripura Congress protests China’s plans of dam over Brahmaputra

AGARTALA - China’s reported plans of construction of a dam over the Brahmaputra river and diverting water to its arid regions were Tuesday strongly opposed by Congress legislators in the Tripura assembly.

“Building of dam over the Brahmaputra river and diversion of water will not only adversely hit northeast India but also create drought in the region,” senior Congress legislator Sudip Roy Barman told the assembly, whose three-week-long budget session is underway.

He said: “China’s move could even lead to environmental problems and affect the surface water table in the northeastern states of India.”

The Congress legislator blamed the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) for remaining silent over “China’s aggression towards northeast India”.

“Satellite imageries have shown China’s dam construction activities,” Roy Barman told the house during a debate on the budget presented by Tripura Finance Minister Badal Chaudhury in the house last week.

CPI-M lawmakers Basudeb Majumder, Sudhan Das and Shankar Prasad Datta protested Roy Barman’s allegation.

They said they protested China’s many anti-India stands and asked why the government of India was silent if China constructed the dam over the Brahmaputra river.

An uproarious scene in the house was witnessed with treasury and opposition legislators engaging in a war of words.

Roy Barman cited media reports that said Beijing was planning a $167 million hydropower plant in Zangmu, 140 km southeast of Tibet’s capital Lhasa, besides diverting water to its dry northwest and northeast provinces which include the Gobi desert.

The 2,906-km-long Brahmaputra is one of Asia’s largest rivers that flows the first stretch of 1,625 km in China’s Tibet region, the next 918 km in India and the remaining 363 km through Bangladesh, before converging into the Bay of Bengal.

According to media reports, China was planning to divert 200 billion cubic metres of water to feed the Yellow River in an attempt at easing acute water shortage in Shaanxi, Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin.

The Brahmaputra is the lifeline for a vast majority of the people in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Bangladesh. Most of them depend on the river to irrigate their fields, fishing and transportation of goods.

Earlier, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh governments also protested China’s reported move to construct a dam over the Brahmaputra and sought Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s intervention in the matter.