The Union Minister for Minister of Road Transport & Highways, Shipping and Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation Nitin Gadkari tweeted on Thursday to confirm that the Government of India has decided to stop India’s excess share of water that flows into Pakistan. The water will be diverted to Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.
Under the Indus water treaty, the three tributary rivers Ravi, Beas and Sutlej have been alloted to India and rivers Chenab, Jhelum were allotted to Pakistan.
Of the 168 million acre feet, India’s share of water is 33 million acre feet. India consumes just about 93 percent of the allotted water and the remaining flows into Pakistan. This unused 7 percent of water is what India decided to stop.
India is constructing three dams, the Shahpur Kandi dam project, a second Sutlej-Beas link in Punjab and the Ujh Dam project in Jammu and Kashmir to arrest the excess water flow.
The union minister tweeted:-
Under the leadership of Hon'ble PM Sri @narendramodi ji, Our Govt. has decided to stop our share of water which used to flow to Pakistan. We will divert water from Eastern rivers and supply it to our people in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab.
— Nitin Gadkari (@nitin_gadkari) February 21, 2019
All the above Projects are declared as the National projects.
— Nitin Gadkari (@nitin_gadkari) February 21, 2019
After the Uri attacks in 2016, the government decided to fast track these projects.
This is the third major attempt by the Narendra Modi Government to isolate Pakistan after the Pulwama attacks, India first scrapped Most Favoured Nation status granted to Pakistan and later hiked duty to 200 percent on any form of trade with Pakistan.