Pakistan: India to never restore IWT, says Amit Shah
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: India will never restore the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) with Islamabad, and its water flowing into Pakistan will be diverted for domestic use, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Saturday, the media reported.
India put into “abeyance” its participation in the 1960 bilateral treaty, which governs the usage of the Indus River System, after 26 Hindu-only tourists were killed on April 22 by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir.
The IWT had guaranteed water access for 80 percent of Pakistan’s farms even through three rivers originating in India.
After the Pahalgam massacre, India suspended the IWT, which triggered a lot of hue and cry in Pakistan, and its leaders and generals issued open threats of even a nuclear war. However, India’s swift and successful Operation Sindoor, carried out on May 6 and 7, destroyed much of Pakistan-based terror infrastructure until, at the request of Islamabad, New Delhi agreed to pause the precision military strike until the next terror attack.
As a leverage against Pakistan’s attempts to revive terror attacks, however, India has kept the IWT suspended.
“No, it will never be restored,” Shah told a daily in an interview.
“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 since 1960,” he said.
The latest comments from Shah have dimmed Islamabad’s hopes for negotiations on the treaty in the near term.
Islamabad is also exploring a legal challenge to India’s decision to hold the treaty in abeyance under international law.
