Barely 10 days ago, Pakistan’s Minister for Law and Justice, Azam Nazeer Tarar, said that Bharat has the right to all the river Ravi waters as per the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), 1960. As such, Pakistan is “legally bound and cannot raise any questions regarding this water usage by India at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’’. Tarar was responding to a calling attention motion raised in the National Assembly on April 24 (Wednesday).
“There is a water treaty between Pakistan and India and it is an international obligation. The right to water on the Ravi belongs to India and we (read Pakistan) cannot interfere with it. Pakistan has rights regarding waters of the rivers Chenab, Jhelum and Indus,’’ Tarar had said. He stressed that it was a legal issue and should not be politicised.
For the uninitiated, the IWT is a water division (as opposed to water sharing) Treaty under which Bharat has exclusive rights over the entire flows in the three Eastern Rivers (Ravi, Beas and Sutlej). Three Western Rivers (Chenab, Jhelum and Beas), on the other hand, have been allotted to Pakistan. Some Indian experts call it 80:20 Treaty as Pakistan gets 80.52 per cent of waters flows (135 MAF) and India gets only 19.48 per cent (33 MAF) of the flows in the six rivers.
The Treaty was signed bilaterally by the two nations, with the World Bank acting as a facilitator. It was signed between Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and General Ayub Khan of Pakistan on September 19, 1960, at Karachi.
Of late, a discernible trend is visible in some so-called Think Tanks, academicians and lawyers in Pakistan to talk of “environmental flows’’ in the Eastern Rivers, particularly Ravi. These repeated references have been made at seminars, debates in TV studios and at other forums. These voices have grown more shrill after India announced the completion of works on Shahpur Kandi dam on Ravi river recently.
Once the dam is filled, some Ravi river waters that were flowing unimpeded into Pakistani territory will get diverted to Kathua and Samba districts of Jammu & Kashmir. This is being wrongly termed as India’s “water aggression’’ in the Pakistani press. These uninformed and ill-advised debates are creating hatred against India.
The fact of the matter is that substantial amounts of Ravi river water have flowed into Pakistani territories since 1960. These annual flows of water have been estimated to be between 1.1 MAF (Million Acre Feet) to 2.2 MAF. According to some estimates by Pakistan’s academic institutions, and the Indus River System Authority (IRSA), these waters contribute more than “80 per cent of the recharge the Lahore aquifer gets’’.
According to some IRSA studies, the economic value of 1 MAF of water comes to around $1 billion. If calculated on per annum basis between 1960 and 2024, this comes to a huge sum, which is literally a bountiful gift to our western neighbour. Senior engineer Arshad H Abbasi, who works at the Centre for Research and Security Studies, Islamabad, has now written to Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, accusing Tarar “of wilfully or otherwise’’ ignoring the fact that Ravi waters are the lifeline of Lahore, the “26th largest city in the world with a population of over 15 million’’.
Between 2000 and 2023, the “average annual flow in Ravi has varied between 1.1 and 2.2 MAF’’, Abbasi wrote. “Even so, this flow is insufficient. Due to Lahore’s extraordinary population growth, the water level is already decreasing by 2 to 3 feet annually,’’ he pointed out. Chiding the Federal Law Minister, Abbasi said: “We will not and MUST NOT give up our legal rights and will pursue every international forum until the Ravi River’s historical flow is restored, even if your ministries are unwilling to fight the legal battle for the river’s environmental flows.’’
The statement is entirely misconstrued, ill-conceived, and devoid of truth, as the term “environmental flows’’ had not been coined in 1960. As such, there is absolutely no question of it being mentioned anywhere in the entire text of the IWT which India wants to modify. It had written to Pakistan on January 25, 2023, demanding a review of the treaty and saying that the two sides should negotiate it afresh under Article XII (3) of the IWT.
“We, the peaceful people of Pakistan, will fight to the last drop of our blood for every drop of legitimate water of the Ravi River. Therefore, please direct the Ministry of Law and Foreign Affairs to take up this case at all international forums before it is too late,’’ Abbasi urged PM Shehbaz Sharif in his letter. Incidentally, under the IWT, every single drop of three Eastern Rivers (Ravi, Beas and Sutlej) belongs to India.
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