The once mighty river Teesta is now crying for a drop of water as its bed has completely dried up following unilateral withdrawal of water by the Indian authorities through their Gozaldoba Barrage in the upstream during the current dry season, officials and experts said today.(BSS)

Complete drying up of the river and its tributaries, has seriously affected irrigation, navigation, ecology, environment and bio-diversity in the northern districts of Rangpur, Nilphamari, Gaibandha, Lalmonirhat and Kurigram and sandy storms are now affecting common life throughout its coarse in the area.

The riverbed has been silted up by over 10 metres during the past one decade following the withdrawal of water and that causes devastating floods, erosion and colossal damages to properties of the people during the rainy seasons in these five districts of greater Rangpur.

The Boro crop growers are the worst sufferers as there is no water at all in the Teesta and its tributaries this year. The downstream portion of the Teesta Barrage Project (TBP) has turned into a complete and vast desert with only sands on its bed that never happened in the past, said the Water Development Board officials and experts.

Official sources and local people said water flow in the Teesta has been stopped to the minimum of the past two decades causing appearance of hundreds of shoals and chars on its bed, and no water is flowing at all through the dried up narrower channels throughout its course in Lalmonirhat, Nilphamari, Rangpur, Kurigram and Gaibandha districts.

Growing Boro crops on over 50,000 hectares of land in 12 upazilas of Rangpur, Nilphamari and Dinajpur districts are now facing serious threat for want of water in the canals of the TBP. Farmers are using shallow tube-wells to irrigate their Boro fields this time, as they are getting no water from the TBP.

The situation has been created due to the unilateral withdrawal of waters of the international river by the Indian authorities through their Gozaldoba Barrage in the upstream, about 64 km off the TBP, they said.

Navigation has been stopped completely at the Teesta Railway Bridge and all other points of the river alarmingly affecting ecology, bio-diversity, environment and irrigation during this ongoing dry season. Only one out of 44 sluice gates of the giant TBP at Dalia point in Nilphamari has a little water flow in between 500 and 600 cusecs, the lowest in one and half decades.

For somehow operation of the TBP for irrigation purposes, there should be a minimum of 20,000 cusecs water flow to bring an estimated 111,000 hectares of land under the Rabi crop farming programme. But due to the unilateral water withdrawal in the upstream, the Boro farming plan in the TBP command area has been collapsed during the current season.

Farmers who planted Boro crop on more land in the area using water from the TBP in last January and February to recoup the losses they incurred during the last floods, are not getting a single drop of water from the Barrage, the sources said.

At the same time, farmers have cultivated maize, wheat, Boro, water melon, vegetables and many other crops in about 15,000 hectares of land on the dried-up Teesta bed throughout its courses in Bangladesh this year as the beds have been dried up completely, said the officials and locals.