ISLAMABAD: A parliamentary panel on Wednesday said that India must not be allowed to deprive Pakistan from the basic human right of access to water as it has been trying to steal its water resources for quite long.
Senate Standing Committee on Law and Justice, which met here with Barrister Ali Zafar in the chair, maintained that Pakistan needed to uncompromisingly take up the critical battle of water as it was a matter of survival.
Zafar said it was a war which India – which controls the flow of all five rivers into Pakistan – began waging upon Pakistanis since long.
During the in-camera meeting, the illegal Indian designs of Kishanganga and Ratle hydropower projects on the Pakistani rivers of Jhelum and Chenab were discussed in detail.
Attorney General for Pakistan, Mansoor Awan, briefed the committee on Pakistan’s ongoing water dispute with India which is pending in the court of arbitration in Hague.
The AGP, who recently returned home from Hague, also briefed the members about the issue.
He said India would not be allowed to control the water resources and all international fora would be used to expose the ugly designs of India.
Barrister Zafar was of the view that it was important that the Senate Committee must oversight that highly sensitive issue so that technical and legal suggestions could be made and if there were any discrepancies in the strategy then the same could be addressed efficiently.
He also said the issues of terrorism, rising prices, corruption, and political disputes are all surmountable but “if we do not aggressively come up with countermoves of our own and effectively respond to the attack on our waters, the consequences will be irreversible.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023