New Delhi: Pakistan on Wednesday expressed concern over India’s rejection of a Hague-based court of arbitration’s latest ruling on the Indus Waters Treaty and urged New Delhi to resume compliance with the 1960 water-sharing agreement. As RNA Media reported earlier, India has dismissed both the ruling and the tribunal’s authority, maintaining that its decision to keep the treaty in abeyance will continue until Pakistan ends its support for cross-border terrorism.
The spokesman for Pakistan’s foreign ministry, Tahir Andrabi, said on Wednesday that India’s position raised questions extending beyond the present dispute. He accused New Delhi of treating international law selectively and argued that unilateral action over transboundary rivers could damage regional peace and stability, according to Radio Pakistan.
Andrabi asked India to return to what Islamabad considers “full compliance” with the treaty, respect its institutional and dispute-settlement mechanisms and engage with Pakistan “constructively”. He contended that the Indian foreign ministry’s rejection could neither alter New Delhi’s treaty obligations nor nullify the arbitration award.
The Pakistani spokesman said Islamabad would use all available measures to seek implementation of the ruling while continuing to observe the treaty’s provisions. His remarks reflected Pakistan’s effort to build diplomatic and legal pressure, although they did not address India’s central contention that normal treaty cooperation cannot remain insulated from sustained cross-border terrorism.
India had on Monday categorically rejected the tribunal’s award on the status of the treaty and interim measures concerning the Ratle hydroelectric project in Jammu & Kashmir. The Ministry of External Affairs described the body as an “illegally constituted” court with no jurisdiction to pronounce on India’s sovereign decisions.
New Delhi said neither the latest award nor any future pronouncement by the tribunal would affect the hydroelectric projects being undertaken by India. It reiterated that the treaty would remain in abeyance until Pakistan “credibly and irrevocably” ended its support for cross-border terrorism, a charge Islamabad denies.
India announced that decision on April 23, 2025, a day after the Pahalgam terror attack killed 26 civilians in Jammu & Kashmir. The Cabinet Committee on Security linked any restoration of the treaty to a demonstrable end to Pakistan’s backing for cross-border terrorism, making the dispute a national-security issue rather than merely a disagreement over water allocation or dam design.
The arbitration court, however, ruled that the treaty remained fully in force and that India must continue observing its obligations governing hydroelectric projects on the western rivers. It also imposed temporary restrictions on parts of the Ratle project, including the height to which portions of the dam wall and power-intake structure may be built, pending a decision by a neutral expert expected by July 2027.
The body that delivered the award is an ad hoc court of arbitration constituted under the treaty and administered by the permanent court of arbitration in The Hague. India has not participated in its proceedings because it disputes the court’s constitution and maintains that Pakistan improperly sought arbitration while a separate neutral-expert process covering the Kishenganga and Ratle projects was being pursued.
The procedural dispute dates to 2016, when Pakistan requested a Court of Arbitration and India sought the appointment of a neutral expert over similar technical questions concerning the two projects. The World Bank eventually activated both processes in 2022, while acknowledging that running them concurrently presented “practical and legal challenges”.
Under the treaty, questions are first considered by the Permanent Indus Commission, technical “differences” may go to a neutral expert and legal “disputes” can be referred to arbitration. India’s objection rests on its view that these mechanisms have a prescribed sequence and that parallel proceedings risk producing overlapping or contradictory decisions.
Signed in Karachi on September 19, 1960, after nine years of negotiations assisted by the World Bank, the treaty allocates the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej to India and the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab principally to Pakistan. It nevertheless permits India specified agricultural, domestic and non-consumptive uses of the western rivers, including run-of-river hydroelectric generation subject to detailed design restrictions, as explained in the World Bank’s treaty factsheet.
The latest exchange leaves the fundamental deadlock unchanged. Pakistan wants India to return to the treaty’s established framework, while New Delhi says cooperation cannot resume without a credible and irreversible change in Islamabad’s conduct on terrorism. The arbitration award may reinforce Pakistan’s legal case, but its practical effect will remain limited as long as India rejects the tribunal’s jurisdiction and declines to participate in its proceedings.