india

Updated: Feb 22, 2019 23:04 IST

A day after Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s remarks on India’s decision to stop the flow of India’s unutilised share of water from the Indus and its tributaries to Pakistan — pitched as a response to the attack by a terrorist affiliated to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed in Pulwama that killed 40 Indian troopers — the ministry of water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation issued details on how the government plans to enforce the decision.

According to the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) signed in 1960, control over the water flowing in three eastern rivers of India, Beas, Ravi, Sutlej was given to India, while control over the water flowing in three western rivers of India, Indus, Chenab and Jhelum was given to Pakistan.

Responding to Gadkari, Pakistan says it has no concern if India diverts water of its eastern rivers (Ravi, Sutlej and Beas).

The Pakistani media on Thursday reported the secretary of Pakistan’s Ministry of Water Resources Khawaja Shumail as saying: “We have neither concern nor objection if India diverts water of eastern rivers and supplies it to its people or uses it for other purposes, as the IWT allows it do so.”

“But we will definitely express our concerns and raise objections strongly if they use or divert waters of western rivers (Chenab, Indus, Jhelum) on which our right to use prevails,” he maintained.

According to the ministry of water resources, India ends up using almost 95% of its share of the eastern rivers. “However, about 2 Million Acre Feet (MAF) of water annually from Ravi is reported to be still flowing unutilized to Pakistan below Madhopur,” the ministry said.

To stop the flow of this water, the Shahpurkandi project was revived recently.

“This project will help in utilising the waters coming out from powerhouse of Thein dam to irrigate 37000 hectares of land in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and Punjab, and generate 206 MW of power. The project was scheduled to be completed by September 2016. However, following a dispute between the state of J&K and Punjab, the work on the project had been suspended since August, 2014,” the ministry said. The cabinet approved the construction for the dam in December, 2018.

Shumail said, “India wants to construct Shahpurkandi dam at the Ravi basin. This project is abandoned since 1995. Now, they (India) want to construct this in a bid to use its own share of water that goes unutilised and finally flows to Pakistan. So if they want to use this whether through storing it through construction of this dam or any other way for their people, they can do as we have nothing to do with it,” he added.

In addition to this, the government said the construction of Ujh multipurpose project is also underway. “This project will create a storage of about 781 million cu m of water on river Ujh, a tributary of Ravi for irrigation and power generation in India itself and provide a total irrigation benefits of 31,380 ha in Kathua, Hiranagar and Samba district of J&K apart from providing water for the district Kathua of J&K,” the ministry said. The implementation of the project will be six years from the construction period.

The government said it is also planning to tap excess water flowing to Pakistan through river Ravi (even after construction of Thein Dam) by constructing a barrage across river Ravi for diverting water through a tunnel link to the Beas basin. The project is expected to utilise about 0.58 MAF of surplus waters below Ujh dam by diverting the same to Beas basin for benefits of other co-basin states.

According to a strategic expert, instead leveraging the Indus Water treaty, India has “gone out of its way” to accommodate Pakistan’s water demand.

“These projects have been planned for more than a quarter century and the completion will take years. The decision to unfreeze these projects was announced in 2016 after the Uri attack so they are (now) recycling promise of 2016 after Pulwama. It goes to show that it is more of a propaganda rather than an attempt to fundamentally change the water relationship with Pakistan. Because if they want to leverage the treaty they can suspend the permanent Indus Commission and can do quite a few things within the domain of international law but they have bent over backwards to accommodate Pakistan,” strategic affairs analyst Brahma Chellaney said.

He pointed to the fact that India hosted a Pakistani inspection team just three weeks before and advanced the Indus commission meeting in July 2018 by seven months. “It goes to show that India is unwilling to leverage the Indus water treaty to help reform Pakistan’s behaviour so all these announcements are PR exercises which obscure the reluctance of the government to use the treaty as a source of leverage for Pakistan,” he said.

A three-member delegation of Pakistani experts headed by Syed Mehr Ali Shah completed its general tour of inspection (from January 28 to February 1) to various hydropower projects — 1,000MW Pakal Dul, 48MW Lower Kalnai, 850MW Ratlay and 900MW Baglihar dam at Chenab Basin in India.

Besides, India, a couple of days before the Pulwama attack, also shared the design data of its three planned run-of-the-river hydropower schemes with Pakistan under the IWT. These included Balti Kalan, Kalaroos and Tamasha hydropower projects which are planned to be constructed at Balti Kalan Nullah and Kalaroos Nullah at the Jhelum basin and Tamasha, a sub-tributary of the Indus river, respectively.

Pakistan’s Commissioner for Indus Waters, Syed Mehr Ali Shah, said he hopes the reciprocal visit by a team of Indian experts to Kotri Barrage (Sindh, Pakistan).

Congress leader Manish Tewari said on Friday, “Yesterday, you had the Highways Minister saying that we will stop the flow of all eastern rivers to Pakistan. Somebody needs to ask them that do dams get built in a day? The two projects he referred to or he was alluding to is Shahpurkandi, Shahpurkandi was cleared in 1999, the other was cleared by Union Cabinet in 2006.”