PATNA, Sept. 2 -- Senior leaders of the Janata Dal (United), including deputy chief minister and water resources minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Kumar Jha have stepped up demands for Bihar's formal say in the study, planning and eventual construction of the proposed high-level dam on the Kosi river in upstream of Nepal. The state government's push to have its say in the preparation of a high dam on Kosi follows the demand of the JD(U) to dismantle Farakka barrage on river Ganga and termination of the India-Bangladesh water-sharing treaty. The Centre has assured that Bihar's interests will be kept in view during the treaty's upcoming renewal. Jha, who is also national executive president of JD(U), has been raising the issue of Farakka dam dismantling since long, as it was leading to heavy deposit of silt in the river Ganga and its tributaries. The two leaders met the Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and external affairs minister S Jaishankar in delegation along with chief minister Samrat Choudhary in New Delhi and stressed that the state's views must be represented in the technical work on the Sapta Kosi high dam multipurpose project and related flood management strategy. The Central government is learnt to have agreed to the state's demand and said that one member will be nominated to the joint technical expert committee examining the project. "Assurances were also given on representation in the joint project office (JPO) in Biratnagar, Nepal, which has been handling detailed investigations and the detailed project report (DPR) since its establishment in 2004," said a senior officer of the water resources department (WRD). Until now, the joint panel of experts from India and Nepal and the JPO have comprised only central Indian and Nepali officials. Bihar engineers have attended occasionally as special invitees. The engineer-in-chief, flood control, often attended the expert panel meeting, but as a special invitee. Bihar had no permanent representation in the joint technical team or voting. This has been the position for the more than two decades since the JPO was set up and throughout the life of the formal bilateral expert mechanism. Officials in Patna have long argued that design parameters on dam height, storage capacity and release schedules will directly determine the volume, timing and silt load of water reaching north Bihar, the primary downstream sufferer from the river often called the "Sorrow of Bihar." Deputy chief minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary underscored the stakes: "Bihar is devastated by floods every year. The permanent solution is the construction of high-level dams or reservoirs on the rivers coming from Nepal. These dams have to be built in Nepal. In this regard, we recently met the Union finance minister and the external affairs minister. The finance minister has given a clear directive that the work of preparing the DPR will be completed by the Central Jalshakti ministry in the next one to one-and-a-half months." He has repeatedly maintained that high dams remain the lasting remedy for floods and erosion originating in the Himalayan catchment. The governments of India and Nepal have been in consultation on the feasibility of the high-level dam since an agreement in 1991 to undertake joint investigations and prepare a DPR for the Sapta Kosi high dam multipurpose project (and the associated Sun Kosi storage-cum-diversion scheme). Progress received intermittent impetus over the years, including after visits by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Nepal that revived bilateral water cooperation. The JPO in Biratnagar has conducted field investigations, yet the DPR remains incomplete amid local sensitivities in Nepal and the need for further studies on submergence, environmental and social aspects. Nepal has so far consented only to joint investigations, not to construction. CM Choudhary has separately urged the Centre to allocate around Rs.11,000 crore for development of water management infrastructure across Bihar....