The Ganges Barrage Project was a proposed project in

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

to hold back rain water of the

monsoon A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal osci ...

season because of the periodic drying up of the Ganges River in Bangladesh due to the

Farakka Barrage Farakka Barrage is a barrage across the Ganga river located in Murshidabad district in the Indian state of West Bengal, roughly from the border with Bangladesh near Shibganj. Farakka Barrage Township is located in Farakka (community develop ...

. It was formally cancelled in 2017.

Location and History

In 1963, Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton, a consulting firm from New York, proposed to the

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

government to construct a counter-barrage to hold water in the monsoon and supply it to the Gorai and other rivers in the lean period. In 2013, a feasibility study commissioned by the

Government of Bangladesh The Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh ( bn, গণপ্রজাতন্ত্রী বাংলাদেশ সরকার — ) is the central executive government of Bangladesh. The government was constituted by the Co ...

for a barrage in

Pangsha Upazila Pangsha ( bn, পাংশা) is an upazila of Rajbari District in the Division of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Geography Pangsha is located at . It has 54,424 households and a total area of 414.24 km2. Demographics According to the 1991 Bangladesh ...

Rajbari District Rajbari ( bn, রাজবাড়ী) is a district in central Bangladesh, located in the Dhaka Division. It is a part of the Greater Faridpur subregion of Bengal due to the historical, linguistic and cultural identities of its inhabitants. His ...

, Bangladesh was completed, after four years of work, at a cost of US$5 million (BDT 43 crore). Construction was to begin in 2014 and end in 2020. On 10 April 2017, at the conclusion of meetings in Delhi, Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh and Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, confirmed their commitment to joint development of the Ganges Barrage, and to the visit of an Indian technical team to Bangladesh and the establishment of a Joint Technical Sub-Group on Ganges Barrage Project. On 11 April, at a news conference in Dhaka, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina characterized the feasibility study and project design for a barrage in Pangsha as ‘completely flawed ... suicidal, like Teesta barrage was.' She accused water resources officials behind the plan of wanting to 'make profits from the project's funds.' She stated that she had instructed the water resources ministry to find alternative sites for storage of Ganges monsoon flows for utilization during the lean period, and that she had requested West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to look for sites there as well. On 12 April, Minister of Water Resources Anisul Islam Mahmud announced that the government had abandoned the project and would explore alternative options for utilization of Ganges waters in Bangladesh. He said the barrage itself was not the issue, but rather its location and how it would be built.

Cost of construction

The feasibility study estimated the cost of construction at approximately US$4 billion (BDT 31,414 crore). By April 2017, this had increased to US$5 billion.

Reservoir

The reservoir as designed is over 100 km long, with a pond area of 625 km² and capacity of 2890 million m³. The pond level is 12.5 mPWD and the spillway sill level is 0.0 mPWD. When full the reservoir extends into Indian territory.

Benefits

Benefits of a barrage at Pangsha were estimated to include about 100 megawatts of electricity and 250,000 metric tons of fish. Water could be brought into the reservoir from the Bramahaputra River by gravity or pumping. This in turn would allow transferred Bramhaputra water to be pumped into the

Hoogly River The Bhagirathi Hooghly River (Anglicized alternatively spelled ''Hoogli'' or ''Hugli'') or the 'Bhāgirathi-Hooghly', called the Ganga or the Kati-Ganga in mythological texts, is the eastern distributary of the Ganges River in West Bengal, In ...

to augment flows diverted through

References

External links