China shares Brahmaputra river's hydrological data with Bangladesh, but says no to India

Beijing: China has not shared any hydrological data for the Brahmaputra river this monsoon season with India but continues to give them to Bangladesh.

On September 12, China had said that it could not share the data with India due to upgradation of data collection station in Tibet.

"For long time we have conducted cooperation on the river data with the Indian side. But to upgrade and renovate the relevant station in the Chinese side, we do not have the conditions now to collect the relevant statistics of the river," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang had told the media.

Asked when will China provide the data, he had added, "We will later consider that." 

However, Bangladesh is receiving water level and discharge level data of the Brahmaputra from Beijing. 

BBC quoted Mofazzal Hossain, a member of the joint rivers commission of Bangladesh, as saying - "We received data of water level of the Bramahaputra from China few days ago."

He added that they had been receiving such data from three hydrological stations in Tibet since 2002.

China is expected to share hydrological data on the Sutlej and Brahmaputra rivers with India during the flood season of May 15 to June 15 under a bilateral expert-level mechanism established in 2006.

The data share by upper riparian state, China, to lower riparian states, India and Bangladesh is essential every monsoon to allow anticipation of the flow of the water and take necessary measures to deal with flooding in India's northeastern states.

Earlier on August 18, External Affairs Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar had said that there was an existing expert-level mechanism, established in 2006, and there are two MoUs under which China is expected to share hydrological data on rivers Sutlej and Brahmaputra with India during the flood season of May 15 to June 15.

"For this year, we have not received hydrological data from the Chinese side," Kumar had said.

(With PTI inputs)