New Delhi:
India is building two water storage facilities which would help store Indus water now that the Water sharing treaty with Pakistan has been put on hold indefinitely, AK Bajaj, Former Commissioner (Indus) and Technical Consultant to Indus Water Treaty for 10 years, has told NDTV.
Last week, following the massacre of a group of tourists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, India had indefinitely suspended the water treaty. It had also taken a host of other non-military measures including shutting the Attari border and revoking visas of Pakistan nationals in India.
Mr Bajaj said two years before putting the Indus Water Treaty in abeyance, the government had prepared a framework to renegotiate the treaty. The government has accelerated work on the two new water storage projects on the Indus River System – Pakuldul Project and Bursar projects,” he told NDTV in an exclusive interview.
The construction work of the Pakuldul Project is progressing rapidly while the Bursar Project is in the final planning stage.
When both these water storage projects are ready, India will not only be able to store more water from the rivers connected to the Indus river system as per its requirement but it will also be possible to divert it to states like Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana, he said.
The Indus water treaty, signed in 1960, had never been suspended during the many ups and downs in the India-Pakistan relation.
Under the agreement governing Indus and its tributaries, all the water of the eastern rivers – Sutlej, Beas, and Ravi amounting to around 33 million acre feet (MAF) annually – has been allocated to India for unrestricted use.
The waters of western rivers – Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab – amounting to around 135 MAF annually have been assigned largely to Pakistan.
With 85 per cent of Pakistan’s agricultural economy completely dependent on the Indus river system, Pakistan has called the suspension an “act of war”.
In retaliation, Islamabad has threatened to suspend all agreements between the two countries, including the Simla pact of 1972, which validates the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
Pakistan has also reduced Indian diplomatic staff at the High Commission, shut its airspace to Indian flights, closed down its side of the Wagah border post and asked Indian Defence, Naval and Air Advisers in Islamabad to leave.
