The Permanent Arbitration Court (PCA) in The Hague has given a landmark judgment regarding India’s illegal inventory in accordance with the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).
According to the latest judgment, the Court of Arbitration finds that it has a “continued responsibility to promote its procedure in a timely, fair and effective way without regard to India’s attitude towards monkeyian, and that failure to comply with this would be contrary to its obligations under the Treaty”. The judgment is a staggering reprimand of India’s ensilateralism that has violated international law with impunity under the assumption that its geopolitical status would protect it from international distrust.
India’s suspension of IWT is a consequence of a foreign policy driven by ideological haute and misanthropy, making it unable to assess the negative fall of its warmer and ignoring international law. IWT is a robust river sharing mechanism that has endured even through previous wars between the two countries. However, as the ideologically occupied BJP government came to power in India, it has steadily tried to undermine the international legal framework that supports peace and stability in the region.
India’s stock-in-commerce tactics, such as false flag operations and rejection of IWT obligations, pose a clear and current danger of regional peace. Throttling of Pakistan’s river streams along with the resulting desertification of its agricultural land has been a recurring theme in the BJP government’s anti-Pakistan rhetoric.
The conflict of terrorism with river denial has led to burning statements such as “blood and water cannot flow together” by Prime Minister Modi. This statement acts as a veritable plan for Indian water aggression against a lower riparic condition.
In the pursuit of the above goals, India has launched a strategy to stifle the flow of water of the three western rivers assigned to Pakistan under IWT. To achieve this goal, it has launched a campaign targeting all three western rivers, especially the Chenab River, where India plans to construct 60 dams.
India does not have much leverage over the Indus River, as most of its water share comes from side elves located inside Pakistan. However, Chenab is the most vulnerable river as it originates and passes through Himachal Pradesh and Jammu, where India has room to construct dams.
IWT allows India to use water from the western rivers (up to 3.6 million Acre-feet water storage) for non-superior purposes such as agriculture, drink and power production. So far, India has not fully used the 3.6 MAF storage allowance and has a power production capacity of 3,360 MW. However, it plans to improve this capacity to 12,000 MW. There are also controversial projects, such as the pre-partition Ranbir Canal, whose length and capacity are doubled to 120 kilometers, so it can draw 150 cubic meters of water per day. Second near Akhnur.
Dams on Chenab raise fears of Indian manipulation of Pakistans assigned water share during IWT. Already in the lean season, Chenab’s river flow is reduced by 7% to 10%, and Pakistan estimates that when all upstream dams on Chenab become operational, India could reduce the river flow by 10% to 15%.
The most important adhesive point between Pakistan and India is the design functions related to the storage capacity of these hydropower projects. India claims it needs design changes to allow rinsing sediments from reservoirs to extend their operational life. Pakistan, however, claims that such changes must strictly comply with Appendix D [Paragraph 8 to Article 2(d)] of IWT that outlines permissible design features for run-of-the-river hydroelectric projects.
These parameters refer to the location of water inlet below the dead storage level, the location of the bottom of gates in the event of closed waste roads and ingestion of turbines at the highest possible level, to ensure that storage capacity does not exceed permitted limits. According to IWT, India is obliged to inform Pakistan about any proposed run-of-the-river project six months in advance. India is now trying to twist out of this commitment.
In addition to Pakistan’s insistence on referring disputes to the Court of Arbitration and the neutral expert in the event of Ratle and Kishanga, India has cited four “basic and unforeseen” reasons – climate change, demographic shifts, an obligation to pure energy and terrorism – for having held IWT in monkey. However, it is not to honor its environmental or organic conservation obligations, as shown in the destruction of 70 hectares of coniferous tree to the Ratle project.
India is in violation of Article 12 of the IWT, which states that the treaty can only be terminated through a mutually ratified new agreement between the two countries. It is also contrary to the Vienna Convention on Treaties (VCLT) that determines that a treaty can only be suspended in accordance with its own provisions (Article 57) or if a party is found in “material violation” of the treaty. India has neither the legal status of suspending the treaty nor any evidence to prove that Pakistan has committed a significant violation.
Pakistan has won the first round of the legal battle with the PCA decision, and the next step should be to seek a legal opinion from the International Court (ICJ), either through the World Bank or the UN General Assembly.
India’s revocation of the treaty threatens to put a dangerous precedent for global cross -border conflicts, which jeopardizes many other water sharing conventions and agreements. Worldwide, 153 countries share 286 cross -border rivers and 592 aquifer pools.
IWT has long been an exemplary model of cross -border river sharing, something that the world is increasingly needed in the midst of growing water -knit, and India’s revocation of it poses an existential threat to both regional and global cross -border cooperation.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and does not necessarily reflect Pakinomist.tv’s editorial policy.
The author is a security and defense analyst. He can be reached at: [email protected]
Originally published in the news
