Kishanganga dispute: Pakistan team in Delhi

A high-level Pakistani team will travel to New Delhi on Tuesday to finalise a court of arbitration (CoA) for adjudication of the Kishanganga hydropower plant being built by India on the Neelum river, allegedly in violation of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).

The neighbours have already nominated two arbitrators each and will now together suggest three independent ones to complete the seven-member court.

Under IWT, the independent arbitrators must be experts in water disputes, engineering and law, besides being members of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), World Bank or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sources in Islamabad said in case of a disagreement, the members will be selected through a secret draw.

Pakistan has already nominated Bruno Simma, a German jurist working with ICJ, and Jan Paulson, a Norwegian from an international law firm. On the other hand, India has nominated Peter Tomka, the Slovak vice-president of ICJ, and Lucius Caflisch, a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

CoA will take up the Pakistani complaint that India was constructing the 330-MW plant by diverting the Neelum river, which will reduce by 16% the power generation capacity of the 969-MW Neelum-Jhelum power project on the same river in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir’s Muzaffarabad.

Pakistan maintains the project will cause it a loss of energy worth Rs6 billion a year.