WATER POLITICS

An international court has upheld Pakistan’s plea against India’s pondage at two hydroelectric projects in the New Delhi-administered Kashmir region, reinforcing Islamabad’s position on the Indus Waters Treaty, a water-sharing agreement between the two neighbors, which India unilaterally declared it would suspend last April.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague on Friday upheld its June ruling, affirming the continued validity of the IWT and stating that India cannot unilaterally suspend the agreement.

IWT is a water-sharing pact that India and Pakistan signed in 1960. India suspended the treaty last year following a deadly attack in Pahalgam in India-administered Kashmir.

Pakistan’s government said in an X post on Sunday that the PCA’s award “affirms Pakistan’s central position that the Treaty places substantive limits on India’s water-control capability on the Western Rivers.”

Pakistan has long argued that hydroelectric projects like Ratle and Kishenganga were designed in a way that could allow India to temporarily hold back or manipulate water flows, especially through features such as pondage and gated spillways. Pondage is the small amount of water a hydropower dam can temporarily store to regulate flow for electricity generation, especially during peak demand.

On Saturday, India’s Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement rejecting the PCA’s decision.

“India categorically rejects the present so-called award, just as it has firmly rejected all prior pronouncements of the illegally constituted Court of Arbitration (CoA). India never recognized the establishment of this so-called CoA,” the statement said. “Any proceeding, award, or decision issued by it is null and void.”

“India’s decision to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance remained in force,” it said.

Erum Sattar, an independent water law and policy scholar based in Boston, said that the PCA’s award is a technically and legally correct interpretation of the IWT. But she said its practical impact on the ground will be limited due to degraded relations between the two countries.

“What does the treaty mean and what can it achieve when one party refuses to abide by the rules of the game endorsed by the international legal community it itself agreed to?” Sattar said.

“In the short to medium term, at least, India will continue down its transgressive path, and Pakistan will have to find creative ways to enforce its adjudicated claims,” she told Nikkei Asia.

The decision’s backdrop is relations between India and Pakistan that have remained largely frozen since a three-day conflict in May last year. Diplomatic engagement has stalled, and both countries have continued to restrict overflights by each other’s airlines.

While officials in both capitals have continued to issue sharp statements, Dattatreya Hosabale, general secretary of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — the ideological parent organization of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party — and a top military official recently made public remarks in favor of dialogue with Pakistan. Their comments have been widely telegraphed in Pakistan as well.

“Both India and Pakistan understand that they need to have diplomatic relations — even at the most basic level — to deal with the next crisis,” Sahar Khan, a nonresident fellow at the New York-based Institute for Global Affairs, told Nikkei Asia. “If both sides don’t establish diplomatic relations, they will have to depend on third parties, which is not ideal,” she said.

Ashok Swain, a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden, said that although the RSS has recently indicated openness to restarting dialogue with Pakistan, the Modi government has shown no corresponding political willingness to pursue such engagement.

“[It reinforces] the perception that hardline posturing continues to serve domestic political interests better than diplomacy,” he said. “Pakistan, weakened economically and with political instability at home, has also lacked the capacity to initiate a meaningful reset,” he told Nikkei Asia.

While New Delhi continues to refuse to participate in international arbitration, Islamabad appears to maintain its course of diplomatic tactics with the global community.

“Pakistan will continue using the force of the diplomatic community to put pressure on India to abide by the decisions of international courts on [the IWT],” a government official told Nikkei Asia on condition of anonymity.