India will never restore the Indus Waters Treaty with neighbouring Pakistan, and the water flowing there will be diverted for internal use, says federal Home Minister Amit Shah.
India put into “abeyance” its participation in the 1960 treaty, which governs the usage of the Indus River system, after 26 people were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir in April, in what New Delhi described as an act of terror backed by Pakistan.
Pakistan denied involvement in the incident, which led to days of fighting between the two nuclear powers – their worst military escalation in decades, bringing them to the brink of another war.
Despite a ceasefire agreed upon by the two nations last month, Shah said his government would not restore the treaty, which guaranteed water access for 80 percent of Pakistan’s farms through three rivers originating in India.
“It will never be restored,” Shah told The Times of India newspaper in an interview on Saturday.
“We will take water that was flowing to Pakistan to Rajasthan by constructing a canal. Pakistan will be starved of water that it has been getting unjustifiably,” he added, referring to the northwestern Indian desert state.
The transboundary water agreement allows the two countries to share water flowing from the Indus basin, giving India control of three eastern Himalayan rivers – Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas – while Pakistan got control of the three western rivers – Jhelum, Chenab, and Indus.
The treaty also established the India-Pakistan Indus Commission, which is supposed to resolve any problems that arise. So far, it has survived previous armed conflicts and near-constant tensions between India and Pakistan over the past 65 years.
However, the comments from Shah, the most powerful minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet, have dimmed Islamabad’s hopes for negotiations on the treaty in the near term.
Pakistan has not yet responded to Shah’s comments. But it has said in the past that the treaty has no provision for one side to unilaterally pull back, and that any blocking of river water flowing to Pakistan will be considered “an act of war”.
“The treaty can’t be amended, nor can it be terminated by any party unless both agree,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said last month.
Islamabad is also exploring a legal challenge to India’s decision to hold the treaty in abeyance under international law.
Legal experts told Al Jazeera in April that the treaty cannot be unilaterally suspended, and that it can only be modified by mutual agreement between the parties.
“India has used the word ‘abeyance’, and there is no such provision to ‘hold it in abeyance’ in the treaty,” Ahmer Bilal Soofi, a Pakistani lawyer, told Al Jazeera. “It also violates customary international laws relating to upper and lower riparian, where the upper riparian cannot stop the water promise for the lower riparian.”
Anuttama Banerji, a political analyst based in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera in April that the treaty might continue, but not in its present form.
“Instead, it will be up for ‘revision’, ‘review’ and ‘modification’ – all three meaning different things – considering newer challenges such as groundwater depletion and climate change were not catered for in the original treaty,” Banerji said.
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