The Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in its present form will not function again and Pakistan has shown no signs of ending cross-border terrorism against India — a prerequisite for resuming cooperation under the over 65-year-old pact, government sources said on Monday.

For any future reactivation of the river water-sharing provisions, the treaty would need to be renegotiated in a modified format — a step that remains contingent on Islamabad permanently halting its support for terrorism directed against India, they said.

According to the sources, Pakistan is attempting to push a false narrative claiming that India’s decision to keep the treaty in abeyance is causing water scarcity. In reality, a significant volume of the water Pakistan receives is lost due to its own lack of storage infrastructure, rampant leakages and ongoing water-sharing disputes among its provinces.

 

Although India is not actively looking to withdraw from the IWT at this stage, the sources stressed that as a sovereign state, it always reserves the right to terminate any treaty that is demonstrably against its interests.

“It (exiting the IWT) depends on the actions that Pakistan takes going forward,” said a source.

India decided to put the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance as part of a series of punitive diplomatic and economic measures unveiled soon after the Pahalgam terror attack in April last year that killed 26 civilians.

Indian officials have said the attack was carried out by The Resistance Front (TRF), a proxy for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). In May, India carried out Operation Sindoor to target terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan in response to the terror attack.

“It would be accurate to say that the IWT in its present form will not function again. If provisions related to river water sharing have to be reactivated, they have to be done in a different form, not in the present form. And only if Pakistan abjures terrorism,” the source said.

In the last few months, Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership have stepped up their rhetoric against India on issues ranging from the use of nuclear weapons to going to war if India stops the water of cross-border rivers following the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty.

Under the World Bank-brokered Indus Waters Treaty, India holds the rights to the eastern rivers — Ravi, Beas and Sutlej — while Pakistan controls the western rivers — Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.

While the pact allows both nations specific usage rights on each other’s rivers, it explicitly permits India to construct run-of-river hydroelectric projects– such as the Kishenganga and Ratle plants– on the western tributaries before they cross into Pakistan.

India and Pakistan signed the IWT on September 19, 1960, after nine years of negotiations with a sole aim to manage cross-border rivers. Prior to suspending the treaty, the Indian side strongly pitched for modification of the treaty following Islamabad’s “intransigence” in handling certain disputes.

The Indian side has also been pressing for following the graded mechanism prescribed under the pact for addressing disputes, and that two different approaches can’t be simultaneously initiated to tackle differences.

While Pakistan sought the appointment of a neutral expert to handle its objections to the Kishenganga and Ratle projects in 2015, it unilaterally retracted this in 2016 and sought a Court of Arbitration.

In 2016, the World Bank appointed both a neutral expert and the Court of Arbitration, which wasn’t recognised by India.

India had attended meetings convened by the neutral expert but stayed away from proceedings of the Court of Arbitration.

The sources said any decision by India to revive the IWT will primarily depend on Pakistan’s actions, including stopping cross-border terrorism.

“We haven’t seen any evidence that they are making any effort in that direction (to end cross-border terrorism).

“On the contrary, we continue to receive reports that proscribed individuals and entities sanctioned by the UN Security Council’s 1267 sanctions committee continue to appear at public events in Pakistan, continue to be able to have platforms that they can use to propagate their messages,” said another source.

“The evidence that our agencies have in terms of their activities just across the Line of Control also suggests that there are no credible steps that have been taken so far to control terrorist activities,” it added.

The sources said Pakistan’s conduct under the IWT has also reflected a consistent pattern of obstruction rather than cooperation.

Since the early years of implementation, virtually every Indian project on the Western Rivers — irrespective of its size, storage capacity or technical design — has been objected to by Pakistan.

Even a small 200 KW hydropower project intended to electrify a remote tribal area was subjected to prolonged objections, the sources said, adding major projects including Salal, Tulbul, Baglihar, Kishanganga, Ratle and Pakal Dul have all faced similar resistance.

This tactic of exploiting and abusing the Treaty was employed by Pakistan not to ensure treaty compliance but to delay and frustrate India’s legitimate developmental rights, they said.

The sources said the dispute resolution provisions of the treaty, intended as an exceptional mechanism for resolving genuine differences, were progressively converted into instruments for delaying Indian projects.

Pakistan repeatedly escalated routine technical issues to third-party forums, prolonged bilateral discussions without resolution and, in recent years, sought parallel proceedings before both the Neutral Expert and the Court of Arbitration, contrary to the graded dispute resolution framework of the treaty, they added.