India ups ante, to stop its Indus water share to Pak

A week after the Pulwama terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir, India on Thursday said it has already moved to stop its own share of water of cross-border rivers from flowing into Pakistan.

Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of Water Resources, said the government has decided to stop water from the three eastern rivers — allotted to India by the 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT) — from flowing into Pakistan. He said the water of Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers will be diverted and supplied to the people in Jammu and Kashmir.

India at present uses about 94%-95% of water of the eastern rivers, but the remaining 5%-6% unused water flows down to Pakistan. The government has been trying to speed up irrigation and hydroelectric projects on the three rivers to make it sure that India uses its share of water fully, without allowing it to flow into Pakistan.

Gadkari reiterated the decision of the government just days after India decided to strip Pakistan of the status of “Most Favoured Nation” (MFN) to do business with. In yet another response to the February 14 attack on CRPF at Pulwama, New Delhi had earlier decided to raise customs duty to 200% on all imports from Pakistan.

The government had also threatened to stop the flow of water from India to Pakistan after a gang of terrorists carried out an attack on a brigade headquarters of the Indian Army at Uri in Jammu and Kashmir on September 18, 2016.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked all the relevant departments of the Union government to speed up works on all the proposed hydroelectric and irrigation projects on the three rivers to stop water allocated to India from flowing into Pakistan.

Gadlkari reiterated the decision of the government on Thursday amid escalating tension between India and Pakistan over the recent killing of 49 CRPF personnel at Pulwama.

“Under the leadership of Hon’ble PM Sri @narendramodi ji, Our Govt. has decided to stop our share of water which used to flow to Pakistan. We will divert water from Eastern rivers and supply it to our people in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab,” tweeted the water resource minister.

Neeta Prasad, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Water Resources, however, clarified that the Union government’s decision to stop India’s share of water from flowing into Pakistan was not new. She said Gadkari on Thursday reiterated what he had always said.

The Indus Water Treaty, which was signed on September 9, 1960, granted the control over the three “eastern rivers” of Indus River System — Beas, Ravi and Sutlej — with an average annual flow of 33 Million Acre Feet (MAF) to India, while the control over the three “western rivers” — Indus, Chenab and Jhelum — with an average annual flow of 136 MAF was given to Pakistan.

The treaty allowed India to construct run-of-the-river hydroelectric projects on western rivers and build storage capacity of 3.6 MAF water — 1.25 for general storage, 1.6 MAF for generation of hydroelectricity and 0.75 MAF for flood control. India, however, has not yet built any storage on the western rivers so far. At present, it irrigates only 0.792 million acres of land, although the IWT allowed it do so over an area of 1.34 million acres with water from western rivers.

Though India has absolute right to use the water of the three eastern rivers, it has not yet built the infrastructure to fully utilise its entitlement. About 2 MAF of water from the eastern rivers are currently flowing from India to Pakistan.

Gadkari on Thursday said the construction work for Shahpurkandi Dam Project in Punjab on the river Ravi has already started. The government had on December 6 approved the construction of the project, granting a central assistance of Rs 485.38 crore for its irrigation component over five years from 2018-19 to 2022-23. The project will irrigate 5,000 hectares of land in Punjab and 32,173 hectares of land in Jammu and Kashmir.

Besides, the Central Water Commission on December 28 submitted a new Rs 4,750-crore Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the long-pending project of building a multi-purpose dam on Ujh, a tributary of the river Ravi. The project will generate 196 MW power and provide irrigation facility to 31,380 hectares of land. “The Ujh project will store our share of water for use in J&K and the balance water will flow from the second Ravi-Beas link to provide water to other basin states,” the Union water resources minister tweeted.

Gadkari also posted that all the projects he mentioned had been given the status of “national projects”.

After the September 2016 terror attack in Uri, New Delhi had also decided not to attend the meeting of the Permanent Indus Commission, which was set up by India and Pakistan in accordance with the IWT to discuss issues related to sharing of water of cross-border rivers. India, however, reversed its decision by May 2017, when its representative attended the meeting of the Permanent Indus Commission.