India and Nepal agree to tame Kosi by March

Kathmandu: Often at loggerheads over water resources, India and Nepal decided to bury the hatchet at the resumption of talks after four years, agreeing to focus on taming by March the raging Kosi River that has played havoc in both countries this monsoon, leaving nearly four million people homeless on both sides of the border.

"The most important and sensitive issue is the Kosi inundation," Shankar Prasad Koirala, secretary at Nepal's water resources ministry, said after the end of the three-day bilateral talks by the Joint Committee on Water Resources (JCWR).

Partnership

In December, when the water level of the river, known as "the Sorrow of Bihar" in India, subsides, both countries will work in harness to repair the ravaged embankment of the Kosi by March 2009.

Already, teams from Nepal, India's central government and Bihar are working in southern Nepal, where the breach in the embankment occurred, to dig a channel, reduce the water flow and beat the river back to its original course westward so that further erosion and submergence is stopped.

The repair work will start at the end of the year when short-term and long-term disaster mitigation plans will be put into action.

Nepal, which blames the Kosi disaster on the negligence of the Bihar government that has the mandate of maintaining the Kosi barrage and accompanying structures, will, however, not press for compensation immediately, Koirala said.

"We are confident that after an assessment of the damage caused by the flood is made and we forward our claim to India, it will be a legitimate one," the official said. "The talks focused on controlling the damage and not compensation."

12-point plan

The talks ended with a 12-point agreement that has promised to expedite three hydropower projects. These are the giant Pancheswor multipurpose project and Saptakoshi multipurpose project, both of which require high dams and are to be constructed by the two governments, as well as the smaller, 240 MW Naumure hydropower project that India has agreed to build for power-starved Nepal.

Koirala said pre-feasibility study for Naumure would be completed in three months while the study on the Saptakoshi multipurpose project, earlier to have been completed in 33 months, has been given an extension of a year for completion.