Emboldened and bolstered by the conditionalities of the Kerry-Lugar Bill on Pakistan, belligerent India has bluntly told Pakistan, "it has not invited Islamabad for talks over controversial Kishanganga Power Project in occupied Jammu and Kashmir," as reported by Hindustan Times on October 15, 2009.
It may be recalled that the Hindustan Times quoting official sources reported that Indus Water Commissioner G. Ranganathan has written a letter to his Pakistani counterpart Syed Jamaat Ali Shah (through Indian Foreign Office) inviting him for discussing the issue that has been lingering between the two countries for a long time.
Syed Jamat Ali Shah, Pakistan Indus Water Commissioner, who had been leading the Pakistani side in negotiations with India, told Business Recorder that after reading this news splashed by international media he had contacted his Indian counterpart for finalising the dates of the talks in New Delhi.
Shah said he was surprised when Indian Water Commissioner G. Ranganthan told him that "no talks on the Kishanganga power project stalled since June 2008 are on the cards in foreseeable future and that he has not been invited for talks on the Kishanganga Project."
Shah said earlier he had invited Indian counterpart during the last routine annual meeting of the Permanent Water Commission for talks on the outstanding water issues but India had not responded positively. The previous round of talks in June 2008 had ended in a stalemate but the two countries had agreed to hold further talks. It is worth mentioning that after New Delhi's continued refusal to hold bilateral talks, Pakistan is seriously considering to taking the issue to World Bank for arbitration, which is the third party under the 1960 Indus Basin Water Treaty
Pakistan has been opposing construction of the power project on Kishenganga (Neelam) as it violated the Indus Water Treaty, a contention rejected by India. India started work on the 330-MW project, whose capacity can be raised to 990 MW, in 1994 and Pakistan immediately protested, prompting talks between the two countries to resolve it. Under the Indus Water Treaty, Pakistan has exclusive right over three of the common rivers - Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, while India has exclusive right over Sutlej, Ravi and Beas. Kishenganga (river Neelam) is a tributary of Jhelum River.
Last year India commissioned another controversial Baghliar Dam built over the River Chenab and illegally diverted over 0.2 million cusecs water in the month of September that caused a loss of billions of rupees to Pakistan as its Kharif crops were adversely hit by scarcity of irrigation water at the critical stage of their maturity.
Pakistani politicians, intellectuals, economists and agriculture experts say that India in a planned manner is blocking water of Pakistan's allocated rivers under the Indus Basin Water treaty to turn green plains of Pakistan into desert and destroy its agro-based economy.
Experts say that the Kishanganga project will dam the Kishanganga (Neelum) River. The proposed 103-metre high reservoir will submerge almost the entire Gurez valley along the AJK's Neelum valley. From this reservoir, water will flow through a channel and a 27-kilometre tunnel dug south through the North Kashmir mountain range. The channel will change the course of Neelum River by around 100 kilometres, which will finally join the Wullar Lake and Jhelum River near the northern township of Bandipur. Presently, the Neelam and Jhelum rivers join each other at Muzaffarabad at a point called Domail.
Through the proposed Wullar barrage project, India plans to maintain constant yearly flow in Jhelum. As a consequence of this 100- kilometre diversion of the Neelum River, Pakistan's Neelum Valley could dry up and become a desert. The most important issue is the diversion of the Neelum River waters to the Wuller Lake.
The Pakistani side has made it clear that such a diversion contravenes the Indus Water Treaty. According to some estimates, the diversion will also reduce the flow of water into Pakistan significantly (a figure of 27 percent has been bandied about). Further, Pakistan has already started work on its own Neelum-Jhelum project and spent some Rs 71 million on it so far. Any construction on the Neelum River upstream will affect its power generation capacity. Given this picture, it is important for the PIC to look into this project and for India to shelve it pending a mutually satisfactory solution.