The Bangladesh Nationalist Party is considering sending of its own team of experts on hydrology and international laws on water to the site of India’s Tipaimukh dam project for a field study, said a vice-chairman of the party.

Party vice-chairman M Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, who was water resources minister during the tenure of the BNP-led alliance government and led the Bangladesh delegation in the 34th and 35th meetings of the joint rivers commission, on Saturday said the party was contacting the experts in respective fields for conducting an extensive field study on the site of the proposed dam which could threaten the ecology and people’s livelihoods in the north-eastern districts of Bangladesh.

‘We are considering the prime minister’s proposal to send a separate team of experts from BNP [to the Tipaimukh dam project site] in our national interests,’ Hafiz told reporters at his Banani home. ‘We have already started contacting the experts to finalise the team,’ he said. Hafiz said senior leaders of the party had discussed Saturday the overall situation regarding Tipaimukh and agreed to send a team in line with the prime minister’s suggestion.

When asked what could be done if assessments of the Tipaimukh project by two committees – one constituted by the government and the other by the opposition – conflicted, Hafiz said, ‘We hope both the teams would work with the same spirit to protect the national interests.’ He denied foreign minister Dipu Moni’s claims that BNP had not raised objection to the Tipaimukh project when it was in power. ‘The statement of the minister is not true… We want to work together for a national consensus on Tipaimukh issue,’ he said.

With the BNP becoming increasingly vocal against the Tipaimukh project, the parliamentary standing committee on water resources decided on June 17 to send a parliamentary delegation to the site for field study. The standing committee also sought names of two members from the opposition to be inducted in the team. But the BNP demanded inclusion of five experts in the team, saying that otherwise they would not join the delegation.

The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Wednesday called on the BNP to take an initiative on their own to send a separate delegation of water experts to the Tipaimukh dam project site and submit a report. She said an all-party parliamentary standing committee on the water resources ministry along with experts would visit the project site and submit their report in the parliament. ‘The government will go through the two reports and then decide what steps could be taken as regards Tipaimukh dam project in the best interest of the country,’ said Hasina, also the ruling Awami League president.

-New Age