Pakistani authorities reportedly wrote letters to their Indian counterparts several times since April to reconsider the decision to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty, sources said on Friday.
India had announced its decision to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) of 1960 with Pakistan on April 23 — a day after at least 26 people were killed in the Pahalgam terror attack.
The Ministry of External Affairs had then said that the Indus Waters Treaty will be held in “abeyance” until Pakistan irreversibly ends its support for cross-border terrorism.
Over a month later, the Hindustan Times reported that Pakistan’s water resources secretary Syed Ali Murtaza sent four letters to India’s Jal Shakti ministry since then, urging a review of the decision to suspend the treaty.
It wasn’t immediately clear when the letters were sent, but a person aware of the matter said that three of the letters were written after Operation Sindoor, the report added.
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Sources told the Hindustan Times that the Pakistani side continued to claim that the treaty cannot be unilaterally suspended by India and that the suspension violates the pact’s provisions.
The letters were said to be a response to a formal notification on April 24 from India’s water resources secretary Debashree Mukherjee to her Pakistani counterpart about the decision to keep the treaty in abeyance.
Mukherjee had reportedly written: “The obligation to honour a treaty in good faith is fundamental to a treaty. However, what we have seen instead is sustained cross-border terrorism by Pakistan targeting the Indian Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.”
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There has been no response by India to Pakistan’s letters so far. Sources, however, claimed that India “remains firm on its decision.”
External affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal reiterated on April 29 that the country would not engage in talks with Pakistan until the neighbour “credibly and irrevocably abjures cross-border terrorism.”
According to the report, the Indian side has stopped sharing all data related to the flows of the western rivers – Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab – that were allocated to Pakistan under the 1960 treaty.
Pakistani leaders said earlier any reduction of water flows allowed under the Indus Waters Treaty will be seen as an “act of war.”
The Indus Waters Treaty has survived four wars between India and Pakistan since its signing in 1960, making this the first time the pact has been suspended.
Source- Livemint
