By Iftikhar Mashwani
ISLAMABAD : India has planned to terminate the “Indus Water Treaty” agreement and in this context, a notice has also been sent to Pakistan on January 25, 2023. It is believed that if the Government of Pakistan does not respond to it within 90 days, the “Indus Water Treaty” will be null and void and India will have complete control over the water of the rivers coming towards Pakistan.
However, the viral information on social media should be taken seriously as the people of Pakistan are deeply concerned about it.While Pakistan stand divided and the government and others institutions busy in internal squabbles.
India sent a notice to Pakistan demanding the modification of the Indus Waters Treaty,on Jan.25,2023. According to official sources Pakistan has so far refused to engage.
According to experts,”If the government does not respond within 90 days,India can null and aviod the treaty and claim rights and control of all the rivers flowing into Pakistan”.
A detailed policy statement should be issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Federal Cabinet or the Parliament on these reports and the public should be told to what extent these reports are true.
There are global surveys that by 2030, Pakistan is included in the list of countries suffering from severe water crisis.Due to this terrible crisis, the agriculture sector will be badly damaged and the food shortage crisis will deepen.
In this context, the alleged reports of termination of the “Indus Water Treaty” are worrisome.
Indus Waters Treaty, treaty, signed on September 19, 1960, between India and Pakistan and brokered by the World Bank. The treaty fixed and delimited the rights and obligations of both countries concerning the use of the waters of the Indus River system.
The Indus River rises in the southwestern Tibet Autonomous Region of China and flows through the disputed Kashmir region and then into Pakistan to drain into the Arabian Sea.
It is joined by numerous tributaries, notably those of the eastern Punjab Plain—the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej rivers.
The Indus River system has been used for irrigation since time immemorial. Modern irrigation engineering work began about 1850. During the period of British rule in India, large canal systems were constructed, and old canal systems and inundation channels were revived and modernized.
The treaty, which India, Pakistan and the World Bank originally signed in 1960, allocates rights over the waters of several rivers in the Indus Basin to India and Pakistan.
The Baglihar Hydroelectric Power Project on the Chenab River in Jammu and Held Kashmir, India. March 25, 2015. (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.
Analysts have often thought of the treaty as a high point in the two countries’ otherwise fraught bilateral relationship. But discontent in both countries has been growing — and this is not the first time that India and Pakistan have publicly clashed over the treaty.
The engineering questions at stake are highly technical, and so are the processes that the treaty lays out for addressing them. But the core of the problem is that India wants to build hydropower projects on the Rivers Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.
Under the treaty, Pakistan can make free use of their waters. But the treaty imposes limits on what India, located upstream, can do with them. Pakistan wants to ensure that India’s dam designs fit within its own interpretation of the treaty’s provisions.
The two sides have been making conflicting arguments about water use since the mid-2000s. India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has taken a tougher public line on water-sharing with Pakistan since assuming power in 2014. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi even said in 2019 that India would stop “every drop” of water in the Rivers Ravi, Sutlej and Beas — which the Indus Waters Treaty assigns to Indian uses — from flowing into Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has invoked the treaty’s disagreement resolution provisions three times.(To be continued)
