India has adopted a firm stance on the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), making it clear that it is not willing to restore the 1960 water-sharing agreement in its existing form. The government has indicated that any future implementation of the treaty will depend on Pakistan taking credible and verifiable action to end cross-border terrorism. The position comes at a time when Pakistan is actively seeking international support to persuade India to revive the treaty, which New Delhi suspended after the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 Indians, most of them tourists visiting the Baisaran Valley in Jammu and Kashmir.
According to senior government sources, India has no intention of returning to the pre-2025 arrangement under which water sharing between the two countries was governed by the original provisions of the treaty. During a briefing with selected journalists, a senior government official said that continuing the treaty in its present form is no longer in India’s national interest. The official reportedly conveyed that Pakistan’s continued support for cross-border terrorism has eroded the very foundation on which the treaty was built, making it impossible for India to continue treating the agreement as separate from broader security concerns.
India also believes that the treaty requires significant changes to reflect present-day realities. Officials have pointed to challenges such as climate change, shrinking Himalayan glaciers, changing river hydrology, increasing demand for water and rising populations, arguing that these factors were not adequately addressed when the agreement was signed more than six decades ago. Government sources suggested that the treaty must evolve to accommodate these changing circumstances instead of continuing under its original framework.
India’s demand for revising the treaty is not new. In January 2023, New Delhi invoked Article XII(3) of the Indus Waters Treaty and formally notified Pakistan of its intention to seek modifications to the agreement. The article relates to the treaty’s final provisions and allows for discussions regarding amendments. Following the suspension of the treaty after the Pahalgam attack, India also stopped sharing hydrological data with Pakistan. This data includes information about river flows, snowmelt and water levels, all of which are crucial for Pakistan’s flood forecasting, irrigation planning and overall water management as the downstream country.
At the same time, India is working towards maximising the use of water from the western rivers allocated to Pakistan under the treaty. Apart from two hydropower projects already underway, India is planning five additional hydroelectric projects—four on the Chenab River and one on the Jhelum River. Experts believe that while the treaty remains suspended, India has greater operational flexibility to build new storage facilities, expand existing hydropower projects, manage river flows more independently and increase water storage for irrigation and other domestic needs.
Dr. Dhruvajyoti Bhattacharjee, Research Fellow at the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), has argued that the suspension of the treaty removes several restrictions on India’s use of the western rivers—Indus, Jhelum and Chenab. According to him, India could develop new water storage infrastructure, expand existing projects, regulate water flows with greater flexibility and even decline future joint inspections by Pakistani officials. He also noted that India could divert water through canals or enhance storage in existing reservoirs, measures that could significantly benefit Indian agriculture and irrigation.
The researcher further highlighted what he described as an unequal distribution of water under the existing treaty. He noted that Pakistan receives approximately 80.52 percent of the total waters of the Indus river system and almost the entire flow of the three western rivers, while India is left with only about 19.48 percent of the basin’s total waters through the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers. He described the agreement as one of the most one-sided international water-sharing arrangements that India has continued to honour for more than six decades.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has intensified diplomatic efforts to gather international backing for the restoration of the treaty. During Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand’s visit to Islamabad on July 20, Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar urged Canada and other friendly countries to persuade India to immediately restore the treaty and fulfil what Pakistan considers its international obligations. Dar accused India of adding a new dimension to regional instability by suspending the agreement and alleged that New Delhi was using water as a weapon. Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has also criticised India’s decision, warning of its potential consequences.
India, however, has maintained that its position remains unchanged. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly stated that “blood and water cannot flow together,” underlining India’s view that normal cooperation under the Indus Waters Treaty cannot resume unless Pakistan takes credible and verifiable action against terrorist groups operating from its territory. As Pakistan continues to seek international support and India insists that security concerns cannot be separated from water cooperation, the future of one of the world’s oldest and most significant transboundary water-sharing agreements remains uncertain.