New Delhi: For the first time since 2019, a Pakistani delegation will visit Jammu and Kashmir this week as part of the Neutral Expert proceedings initiated by India in response to complaints regarding the Kishenganga and Ratle hydroelectric power projects.
In January 2019, a three-member team from Pakistan inspected the Pakal Dul and Lower Kalnai hydroelectric power projects under the provisions of the bilateral Indus Water Treaty. However, no further visits occurred after ties froze when India diluted the constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir.
It has taken five years for another Pakistani delegation to visit Kashmir again, this time not as part of a bilateral inspection visit but under the dispute settlement mechanisms of the 1960 treaty.
The visitors will be in Kashmir from June 17 for 12 days, during which they will go to the disputed power projects.
Pakistan’s initial request to the World Bank in 2016, concerning its objections to the design features of the two hydroelectric power projects, sought a settlement through a ‘Neutral Expert.’ However, Pakistan later withdrew this request and sought adjudication through a Court of Arbitration. India, on the other hand, insisted that the issue should be resolved solely through ‘Neutral Expert’ proceedings.
After failed negotiations, World Bank appointed a Neutral Expert and the chair of Court of Arbitration in October 2022. Issuing a notice for modifying the Treaty, India warned that “such parallel consideration of the same issues is not covered under any provision of the IWT”.
In July 2023, the Court of Arbitration ruled that it was “competent to consider and determine the disputes set forth by Pakistan’s request for arbitration”. Pakistan filed its first Memorial, which listed out its legal case with documents, under this process in March this year. A month later, the Court did a week-long visit to Neelum-Jhelum Hydro-Electric Plant in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir “to familiarise the Court with general aspects of the design and operation of run-of-river hydro-electric plants along the Indus system of rivers”.
While India refused to take part in the Court of Arbitration, it submitted a Memorial to the Neutral Expert in August 2023. Pakistan joined the second meeting of the parties held by Neutral Expert at Vienna in September last year, which discussed matters related to the organisation of the site visit.
The revised Programme of Work showed that a period of 14 days had been allocated in June 2024 for the site visit.
