Mumbai:
India announced on Wednesday that the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 with Pakistan will be held with immediate effect, until Islamabad has its support for cross -border terrorism credible and irrevocably.
The move comes after killing 26 people, including tourists in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday.
What can the impact of this step be? The Indus system of rivers consists of the main river – the Indus – together with the five left bank rivers, namely the Ravi, the Beas, the Sutlej, the Jhelum and the Chenab. The tributary of the right bank, the Kabul, does not flow through India.
The Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej are called Eastern Rivers, while the Chenab, the Jhelum and the Indus Main are mentioned as Western rivers. The waters are crucial for both India and Pakistan.
Pradep Kumar Saxena, who has been the Indian Waters Commissioner of India for more than six years and is associated with work with regard to the IWT, said that India, as a higher Oeverland, has several options.
“This could be the first step to the disapproval of the Convention, as the government concludes,” Mr. Saxena told Press Trust of India.
“Although there is no explicit provision in the Convention for its abolition, Article 62 of the Vienna Convention on the law of the Treaties offers sufficient space under which the Convention can be rejected in view of the fundamental change of circumstances that has occurred with regard to those existing at the time of conclusion of the Convention,” he said.
Last year India sent a formal notification to Pakistan in search of the “assessment and change” of the treaty.
Saxena mentioned the steps that India could take, Saxena said in the absence of the treaty, India is not obliged to follow the restrictions on the “Reservoir Rinsir” of the Kishanganga -Reservoir and other projects on Western Rivers in Jammu and Kashmir. The Indus Waters treaty is currently prohibiting it.
Rinsing can help India to redeem his reservoir, but then filling the entire reservoir can take days. Under the treaty, reservoir filling after rinsing must be done in August – Piekmonsoon period – but with the pact in deviation, it can be done at any time. If you do it when the seeding season starts in Pakistan can be harmful, especially when a large part of Punjab in Pakistan depends on the Indus and his tributaries for irrigation.
According to the treaty, there are design restrictions on building structures such as dams on Indus and his tributaries. In the past, Pakistan has increased objections about the designs, but in the future it will not be mandatory to take the worries on board.
In the past, almost every project was objected by Pakistan.
Striking are Salal, Baglihar, Uri, Chutak, Nimoo Bazgo, Kishenganga, Pakal Dul, Miyar, Lower Kalnai and Ratle.
After the Pulwama terror attack in 2019, the government released eight more hydroelectric projects in Ladakh.
The objections may no longer apply to the new projects.
There are also operational restrictions on how reservoirs should be filled in and managed. With the Convention pending, these no longer apply.
Saxena said that India can stop sharing flood data about the rivers. This can also be harmful to Pakistan, especially during the monsoon when the rivers swell.
India will now not have a restriction on storage on Western rivers, in particular the Jhelum, and India can take a number of flood control measures to reduce floods in the valley, Mr Saxena said.
The tours from Pakistan to India, which are mandatory under the treaty, can now be stopped.
At the time of independence, the boundary line between the two newly established independent countries — Pakistan and India — — straight across the Indus basin, which made Pakistan as the lower bank and India as the upper shore award.
Two important irrigation works, one in Madhopur on Ravi River and the other in Ferozepur on the Sutlej River, on which the irrigation channel stocks in Punjab (Pakistan) had been completely dependent in the Indian territory.
Thus a dispute between two countries with regard to the use of irrigation water from existing facilities arose. Negotiations under the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), culminated in the signing of the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960.
According to the Convention, all waters of the eastern rivers – Sutlej, Beas and Ravi with an average annual flow of approximately 33 million hectares (MAF) are assigned to India for unlimited use, while the waters of the Western Rivieren – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab is assigned to a meter.
However, India is allowed to use the waters of the Western rivers for domestic use, non-consumer use, agricultural and generation of hydropower. The right to generate hydro electricity from Western rivers is unlimited, subject to the conditions for the design and operation of the Convention. India can also create storage places up to 3.6 crazy on western rivers, says the pact.
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