Indus Water Treaty

Signed in the year 1960 by former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the then President of Pakistan, Ayub Khan, the Indus Water Treaty is an agreement that was made to chalk out the control over the 6 rivers that run across India and then Pakistan into the Indus basin.
This treaty was signed following the partition of the subcontinent.
On an international level, the IWT has been seen as one of the most successful cases of conflict resolution. It is so because India and Pakistan, ever since IWT was signed, have engaged in 4 major wars but the treaty has stayed in place.
The origin of the six rivers that make the Indus basin take place in Tibet from where they flow across the Himalayan ranges and end in the Arabian sea south of Karachi. The Treaty was devised as the Indus basin was one of the networks between the two nations and because Pakistan was unsurprisingly threatened with the prospect of being fed by India.

Before 1960, in order to sort out the water sharing issue, the Inter-Dominion accord was laid down in order to release enough waters to Pakistan from India in return for annual payments. However, the problem of this arrangement was soon realised. A new alternative solution was considered necessary.
The Indus Waters Treaty was signed in 1960 after nine years of negotiations between India and Pakistan with the help of the World Bank, which is also a signatory.
Precise details were laid out about how the water will be divided.
While Jhelum, Chenab and Indus (3 western rivers) were allocated to Pakistan, India received the control of Ravi, Beas and Sutlej (3 eastern rivers).
The treaty also stated that aside from certain specific cases, no storage and irrigation systems can be built by India on the western rivers.

India has refused a request by Pakistan to hold a meeting on issues around the Indus Water Treaty at the Attari checkpost near the India-Pakistan border.

Among the key points on the table was evolving a procedure to solve differences on technical aspects governing the construction of the Ratle run-of-the-river (RoR) project on the Chenab in the Kishtwar district of Jammu and Kashmir.
According to the terms of the IWT, India has the right to build RoR projects on the three ‘western’ rivers — the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus — provided it does so without substantially impeding water flow in Pakistan downstream.
Pakistan believes that the project’s current design does pose a serious impediment and has told the World Bank that it wants a Court of Arbitration (CoA) set up to decide on the issue. India says this is only a technical issue and mutually solvable.

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