Although there is no disposition for unilateral abrogation or the suspension of the Indo Water Treaty (IWT), India’s decision to “suspend” the shared 64 -year -old water pact following a militant attack in Pahalgam’s tourist destination in the busy Kashmir shows that it is ready to go to the additional mile to demolish the water flows sell.
In doing so, New Delhi has also chosen to ignore the warnings of its own experts that such an arbitrary step is running the risk of threatening regional stability by having dominant effects on water cooperation within the wider Indian River basin shared by India, Pakistan, China and Afghanistan, in addition to causing loss of reputation and damaging its image as a responsible nation.
This is not the first attempt of India to leave the treaty negotiated by the World Bank in 1960 or try to force Pakistan to accept modifying it. From the 2016 armed attack against a headquarters of the Indian Army Brigade in URI, India has constantly tried to weaken the IWT in an attempt to get out of it.
Practically, the treaty has remained interrupted during the last three years to the point of suspension of the meetings of the Permanent Indo Commission, a joint forum that includes experts from India and Pakistan created under the treaty to address disputes on the exchange of waters at the bilateral level before invoking other mechanisms of dispute resolution. The exchange of floods and other technical information has also been reduced.
Whatever the legal resources available for Pakistan under the provisions of relevant international laws, the battle for their water rights will surely be a long and tedious.
The treaty requires that the commissioners of the two parties meet at least once a year, alternately in India and Pakistan. After the suspension of compulsory commissions meetings, India has completed the notices twice, first in January 2023 and the second in September 2024, to Pakistan to “renegotiate” the terms of the treaty, cite fundamental changes and unforeseen changes in circumstances such as demographic changes, climate change, implementation challenges, etc.
According to international law, particularly the Vienna Convention on the Law of the Treaties of 1969, changes in circumstances are not recognized as reasons to end or suspend the treaties. If India unilaterally revokes the treaty, it would endanger other important cross -border water agreements. Once a precedent is established, according to a commentator, it becomes easier for other players to follow it without much difficulty.
Although India has allegedly housed the desire to cancel the IWT for a long time, the meetings of the Permanent Indo Commission were suspended and the notices served Islamabad for the reevaluation of the pact following the opposition of Pakistan to the Ratles project and the ongoing dispute over the design of Kishanganga.
The treaty allows the upper riverside to build “current” hydroelectric projects in the western rivers (Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, which represent 80 percent of the total flows of the Indo basin, provided that they do not confiscate or deviate the waters of the river through the construction of a significant storage infrastructure. But they have emerged disputes between the two countries on the size of the deposits, thus as project designs that are afraid that Islamabad is modified to create water storage in violation of the agreement.
Experts believe that the suspension of the treaty will allow India to modify the existing infrastructure or build new ones to stop or divert more water without informing Pakistan. Unlike the past, now India will not be required to share its project documents with Pakistan. In addition, it can alter the seasonal release of water from your deposits.
“New Delhi will now rinse and fill in reservoirs not during the monsoon, but at the dry station, from October to February, interrupting the Pakistan planting season,” said a note from the group of experts based in Islamabad Institute. And in the long term, India plans to build and improve a waterfall of dams along the Indo system, increasing the fear of ecological degradation and regional instability.
However, the note argues that India cannot cut the water to Pakistan without huge engineering and environmental adjustments on her side and potentially huge financial and political costs. The detour is also not realistic, since it requires the construction of channels or tunnels on unstable terrain, which runs the risk of flooding Indian territories upstream and destroying local ecosystems.
However, he says that India can manipulate seasonal releases very well or retain flood data, which will interrupt Pakistan crops cycles, increase costs and disturb the yields of downstream crops, especially during the months in which water flows are limited. Therefore, the most immediate risk is the introduction of uncertainty. “The agricultural and energy systems of Pakistan have been built around the predictability that has been maintained for decades. The erosion of the protections of the treaty could undermine those assumptions.”
He argues that there is also the risk of inviting the precedents of retaliation with other superior riparian. “The water closet fogs the diplomatic capital with neighbors such as Nepal, Bután and Bangladesh by closely observing the behavior of India in shared water systems. If India ignores the rights of Pakistan, it reinforces the perceptions that New Delhi is willing to use water as a political tool. This could undermine in progress and future negotiations about the transfers’ Ganga river.
“Becoming the first state in this century to arm openly with water will lead to an important global stigma. Such movement would undermine your regional leadership claim, you will open the door to international criticism and invite the comparisons that India will find it difficult to defend.”
Pakistan says that any attempt to stop or divert the flow of its waters according to the IWT and the usurpation of their rights as a lower riverside is an act of war, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif promising to respond with all force. TO Reuters The report quotes the lawyer Aqeel Malik, the Minister of State for Law and Justice, saying that the Government was working on plans for at least three different legal options, including the problem’s approach to the World Bank, which is the facilitator of the Treaty, against India on its movement to suspend the treaty.
He is also considering taking measures in the Permanent Court of Arbitration or in the International Court of Justice of The Hague, where he could argue that India has violated the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, he said. “Legal strategy consultations are almost complete,” said Barrimer Malik, adding that a decision on what cases to pursue would be taken “soon” and probably would include the search for more than one way.
He added that Islamabad was considering a fourth diplomatic option to raise the problem in the United Nations Security Council. Whatever the legal resources available for Pakistan under the provisions of the treaty and the relevant international laws, the battle for the preservation of the IWT and its water rights will be very long and tedious for the country. And will be fought mainly in diplomatic circles.
Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, May 5, 2025
