Forum Pakistan

Indus Basin, Agreement on the
India and Pakistan have generally implemented the Indus Water Treaty and Indus Basin Development Fund Agreement, which was signed on 19 September 1960 in Karachi. India received the right to use the waters of three eastern rivers; the Ravi, the Beas, and the Sutlej (80 per cent of the water resources of the Indus basin). Pakistan was to utilize the resources of the three we tern rivers; the Indus, the Jhelum, and the Chenab. To compensate Pakistan's loss of the eastern tributaries of the Indus, the construction of a complex of hydropower plant and irrigation project at the cost of ten billion rupees, and the setting up of the Indus Basin Development Fund were envisaged in the treaty. The project was financed and built by a consortium of several countries under the supervision of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).

Tarbela Dam on the Indus basin.
The bulk of the work envisaged by the 1960 azreement was concluded in 1965-67, including the construction or reconstruction of seven connecting canals (which were to move 17 thousand million cubic metres of water from the western rivers of the basin to the ea tern rivers), five dams, and the Mangla water reservoir and hydro-electric plant on the Jhelum. The last project, the Indus-Jhelum canal, was completed in 1973. In April 1964, the Consortium and Pakistan concluded an additional agreement worth $315 million to finance the Tarbela dam on the Indus.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: G. Mueen-ud-Din, 'Indus Waters Treaty Negotiations', Indus (Lahore: Vol. I No.9 October 1960); 'Soviet-Pakistan Relations and Post-Soviet Dynamics', London: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1995.