India rejects arbitration court ruling on Indus Waters Treaty

New Delhi: India on Monday rejected a court of arbitration’s ruling that overturned New Delhi’s decision to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, maintaining that it had never recognised the existence or jurisdiction of what it described as an “illegally constituted” court.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled earlier in the day that the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty remained in force and that India was bound by its obligations under the agreement. In an interim order, the tribunal also barred India from constructing certain components of the Ratle hydroelectric project in Jammu and Kashmir, Scroll.in reported.

The Ministry of External Affairs, however, said the ruling would not alter India’s decision to keep the treaty in abeyance. India had suspended the pact on April 23, a day after the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, in which 26 people were killed. New Delhi had said the treaty would remain suspended until Pakistan took credible and irreversible steps to end its support for cross-border terrorism.

Since putting the treaty on hold, India has accelerated work on several hydropower projects in Jammu and Kashmir that Pakistan has opposed under the 1960 agreement, the Hindustan Times reported. These include the Ratle and Kishenganga projects, over which Pakistan had sought arbitration.

The foreign ministry said the arbitration court lacked jurisdiction to question India’s sovereign decisions and that its rulings would not affect the country’s actions concerning the hydropower projects. It also maintained that the tribunal had been established by the World Bank in violation of the treaty’s provisions and rejected its latest ruling as well as its earlier pronouncements.

India and Pakistan signed the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960, with the World Bank serving as an additional signatory. The agreement established the allocation of waters from the Indus River system between the two countries.

Under the treaty, India was given rights over the eastern rivers, Beas, Ravi and Sutlej, while Pakistan was allocated the western rivers, Indus, Chenab and Jhelum. The pact also permits both countries to use rivers allocated to the other for specified purposes, including certain small hydropower projects involving little or no water storage.