On Monday, the Common Interest Council (CCI) rejected on Monday the federal government proposal to build new Channels of the Indo River, annuling a previous decision of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) taken in February.
“New channels will not be built without mutual understanding and consensus among all the provinces,” said a statement from the Prime Minister after the meeting chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
The high -level meeting, convened early at the request of the Government of Sindh, attended the main ministers of the four provinces, the Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif, Federal Minister Ameer Muqam and other officials.
The CCI agreed to withdraw the provisional approval of the project and announced the formation of a Federal-Provincial Committee to propose agricultural and long-term water management solutions in line with the 1991 water agreement and the 2018 water policy.
“The Government undertakes to resolve all water -related disputes in a friendly way, ensuring that the concerns of any province are addressed through due diligence,” the statement added.
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s prime minister Ali Amin Gandapur welcomed the measure and said: “It has been decided to solve problems through mutual understanding.”
He confirmed that some of the demands of KP, including the recognition of tobacco as a formal harvest and the review of the National Commission of Finance (NFC), would be added to the next CCI agenda.
The decision is produced in the midst of generalized protests in Sindh on the Canals project. The plan to build six channels at an estimated cost of RS211.4 billion faced a strong resistance from the Sindh government and nationalist groups, who warned that the measure would deprive Sindh of its legitimate part of the water.
The sitting and blockades on the key highways, which now last more than 10 days, have interrupted the movement of goods between Sindh and Punjab, causing a shortage of gasoline and food supplies. The stranded transporters reported growing damage to vehicles as the protests continued without resolution.
Despite the guarantees of Shehbaz’s prime minister to the president of PPP, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, that no new channel would continue without consensus, the protests in the field have intensified, highlighting the deeply rooted distrust and regional tensions on the distribution of water.
