IWT fair to India if it utilises all its rights: Commissioner : The Tribune India

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IWT fair to India if it utilises all its rights: Commissioner

JAMMU: With India and Pakistan fighting over river waters following the Pulwama terror attack, India’s Permanent Indus Water Commission believes that the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), brokered by World Bank between the two countries in 1960, was “fair” to India if it could utilise all its rights given under the pact.



Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, February 22

With India and Pakistan fighting over river waters following the Pulwama terror attack, India’s Permanent Indus Water Commission believes that the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), brokered by World Bank between the two countries in 1960, was “fair” to India if it could utilise all its rights given under the pact.

“When someone says the treaty is unfair to India, my simple answer is that we could not utilise our rights in terms of western rivers (Indus, Chenab and Jhelum), which have been given under the treaty. So, I can’t say the treaty is unfair to us unless we utilise all our rights,” Pradeep Kumar Saxena, Indian Commissioner for Indus Waters, recently said during a seminar at the University of Jammu.

The Indian Commissioner, who was part of the Indian team to fight the Kishenganga hydroelectric project in the Court of Arbitration, said: “Though India has utilised its entire allocation (almost 95 per cent) of water under eastern rivers (Beas, Ravi and Sutlej) by constructing three major dams, our efforts vis-à-vis utilisation of allocated water of the western rivers is not encouraging.”

Under the IWT, India has control over the water flowing in the eastern rivers — Beas, Ravi and Sutlej — while Pakistan has control over the western rivers — Indus, Chenab and Jhelum.

“As far as the western rivers are concerned, we have been permitted (under treaty) storage of 3.61 million acres feet (MAF) of water. So far, we have not been able to utilise even a single drop of storage in India. We are constructing the Pakal Dul hydroelectric project which is only 0.1 MAF permitted storage and on hydropower account, we could utilise only one-sixth of the hydropower that is permitted to us,” Saxena said.

On Thursday, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said the Centre had decided to stop “our share of water that used to flow to Pakistan” and the government would divert water from the eastern rivers to J&K.


‘No provision of unilateral exit from treaty’ 

  • Pradeep Kumar Saxena, Indian Commissioner for Indus Waters, made it clear that “there is no clause for unilateral exit from the IWT and the treaty can be abrogated and modified only when there is an agreement between the two countries. Under the treaty, territorial issues have been kept out of its ambit”.
  • He said India was free to construct any project on the Indus if it felt that it was not violating the treaty. 
  • “If Pakistan has any problem with any project, it can resolve it in the Permanent Indus Commission or can go to court. Only the court has the power to stay construction and Pakistan cannot stop us from building any project. The best instances were Nimoo Bazgo and Kishanganga hydroelectric projects.” 

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