(ET)
Taking the offensive, India has refused to renew its 1989 agreement of sharing hydrological data during flood season with Pakistan and told the neighbour that it would only provide information on “extraordinary discharges and flood flows.”
The agreement, a result of an earlier India’s goodwill gesture, was renewed every year. But the Indian position has changed, coinciding with heightened tensions over the abrogation of Jammu & Kashmir’s special status and the bifurcation of the state into two Union Territories. “This agreement was not renewed in the current year by us,” P K Saxena, Indian Commissioner for Indus Waters, told TOI on Wednesday. The decision, however, has nothing to do with the Indus Water Treaty signed between India and Pakistan in 1960 for sharing waters of the Indus system. “India as a responsible nation is committed to the provisions of the IWT,” said Saxena.
