Washington: The World Bank has said that it is working with New Delhi and Islamabad for an amicable solution after receiving Pakistan’s complaint on the completion of the Kishanganga hydropower plant by India, said a report in the Dawn.
“We confirm receiving the letter from Pakistan earlier this week regarding the Indus Waters Treaty,” a spokesperson for the bank told Dawn in Washington. “The World Bank continues to work with both countries to resolve the most recent disagreement in an amicable manner and to safeguard the Treaty.”
Pakistan complained that India has violated a World Bank-mandated pause, placed in 2016, by completing the controversial Kishanganga project.
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Pakistan believes that both Kishanganga (330 megawatts) and Ratle (850 megawatts) contravene the Indus Water Treaty’s restrictions on the construction of run-of-the-river plants. The plants are respectively on a tributary of the Jhelum and the Chenab rivers.
A World Bank fact-sheet notes that the two countries disagree over whether the technical design features of the two plants violate the treaty. The bank acknowledges that “the treaty designates these two rivers as well as the Indus as the Western Rivers’ to which Pakistan has unrestricted use”.
But in the same fact-sheet, the bank also says that “India is permitted to construct hydroelectric power facilities on these rivers subject to constraints specified in annexures to the Treaty”.
