KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah on Thursday reiterated his stance that the release of water into the Chashma-Jhelum Link Canal was an arbitrary move and against the spirit of the 1991 water accord.

Speaking at a reception given in his honour by the Karachi Press Club on its premises, Mr Shah said the canal was not part of the Indus river system and thus there was no justification for releasing water into the irrigation channel. He quoted from certain provisions of the accord to argue that Punjab could not release water into any canal until water level in the Indus right from Guddu up to Kotri reached to the specified level.

He said the Punjab side had agreed not to release water to its other canals until the water flow situation reached the specified level and it was expected that the discharge at Guddu Barrage and Kotri downstream might increase considerably in three days. However, Irsa did not wait even for three days and opened the canal, he regretted.

Informing the audience about the current position, the chief minister said the inflow in the river system had increased from the minimum 135,000 cusecs at Guddu to 190,000 cusecs over the past two days. The Kotri downstream flow had also increased from 35,000 cusecs to 40,000 cusecs.

Mr Shah also regretted that a meeting of the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) was called in a hurry without any valid reason.

He explained that the 1991 accord clearly stated that the Indus water could be released into any channel after water requirement of the lower riparian provinces was met, which meant that only surplus water could be diverted to any other canal.

He pointed out that there had been an acute shortage of water in the Indus river system until recently and the inflow at the Rice Canal was absolutely inadequate to meet the irrigation requirements of Larkana, Jacobabad, Dadu and Shahdadkot.

He said water was released in the CJ-Link Canal when Thatta, Badin and several other districts were experiencing an acute shortage while Sindh was also bound to supply water to Balochistan through Keerthar Canal.

The chief minister also clarified that he had advised his Punjab counterpart during an earlier meeting on the issue to let the water level in the system increase and if there was any surplus water, it should be diverted to other canals but not the CJ-Link Canal, which was not part of the 1991 water accord.

Mr Shah criticised Punjab’s representative in Irsa Shafqat Mehmood for issuing irresponsible statements on the issue and exerting undue pressure on the representatives of the federation and Sindh to the extent that they had to quit the Authority. He said that the Punjab chief minister had promised to take action against Mr Mehmood for unlawfully taking over Irsa as its chairman and issuing the order for the opening of the CJ-Link Canal. He said he wanted appropriate action to be taken against Mr Mehmood.

The chief minister said that the rice and cotton crops in Sindh were badly affected for want of water, adding that the province this year had experienced the decade’s worst water shortage. CM’s advisers Jameel Soomro, Rashid Rabbani and Waqar Mehdi, as well as PPP leaders Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah and Saeed Ghani, were present.

Courtesy by dawn.com