Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission (JRC) member Mir Sajjad Hossain led the three-member Bangladesh delegation while Indian JRC member SP Kakran led five-member Indian delegation at this operational level meeting held at JRC office here following a visit to the Hardinge bridge site on Sunday in a positive mood.

Briefing newsmen jointly after the meeting that lasted over two hours, JRC member Mir Sajjad said, "I think in the future, we can have a long term dry season flow augmentation to raise the Ganges water availability so that we (India and Bangladesh) don't need to differ about the availability. Yes, we need dry season flow augmentation and we can do it if we sit together regionally."

"As Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the last Saarc Summit, water problem can be resolved by storing water in Nepal by taking cross-border projects to augment dry season flow for meeting demand of all the three countries," Mir Sajjad added.

SP Kakran said, "We are good friends and neighbours. But because of climatic reasons we can't assure the availability. We can only assure that we (India) will not take a single drop more than our requirement of 40,000 cusec. What we can assure that we will send all the rest to you. If the availability is 1,00,000 cusec than you will get 60,000 cusec. If, it is more than that you will receive even more."

Responding to a number of questions, the Indian Water Resources Ministry official pointed out that constructing a reservoir needed huge amount of investment and land area.

Kakran favoured solution of water problem bilaterally but did not rule out international discourse considering the nature of heavy investment it will require to approach the long-run water availability problem.

It was the second meeting of the joint committee this year. The previous meeting was held last month.