Imphal, April 22 2010: Bangladesh High Commissioner to India Tariq A Karim arrived here in Imphal on his three day visit in the state and reviewed the ground reality of the controversial proposed construction of Tipaimukh Dam with officials of the state government.

The visiting High Commissioner accompanied by his spouse Nagma Karim and his Commercial Councilor, Habibur Rehman Thursday is proposed to visit the site where the dam for the proposed Tipaimukh Multi-purpose Hydro-electricity Project is to be taken up, official source said.

Today, the High Commissioner held a meeting called on with the state Governor, Gurbachan Jagat this afternoon which was followed by another rounds of meeting with the Chief Minister later this evening.

Tipaimukh Dam is to be built on the river Barak in Manipur.

The project has sparked off controversy as India has unilaterally planned to build the dam just 100 km off the Bangladesh border and is likely to affect two major rivers of Bangladesh, namely the Surma and the Kushiara and another 60000 Manipuri people who depend on the river for livelihood and other activities.

Bangladeshi experts estimated that the massive dam will disrupt the seasonal rhythm of the river and have an adverse effect on downstream agriculture and fisheries.

The proposed Tipaimukh project on the Barak will have adverse impacts on the ecology, environment and economy of the northeastern region of Bangladesh, according to the experts and environmentalists and considering the location of Manipur in the highly seismic five zones of the globe, they are demanding scrapping of the dam.

The proposed dam falls at the confluence of Indo-Burma, Indo-Malayan and Indo-Chinese biodiversity hotspot zone.

These areas are characterized by the presence of a large number of plant and animal species, like tiger, hillock gibbon, hornbill, turtle, dolphin etc.

many of which are not seen or seldom witnessed in other parts of the world.

Of the recent, a massive rally in Manipur's Ukhrul district had submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister of India demanding scraping of the Dam among others demands of review of big dam projects in the north eastern part of the country.

The visit of the Bangladesh High Commissioner to the dam site was the second time since objections to the construction of the dam rose up from people of the country and opposition political parties.

In the last week of July last year, a 10-member all-party delegation of parliamentarians of Bangladesh had visited the dam site and studied the possible impacts by the project.

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