LAHORE, April 21: The Indus Basin Water Treaty will be “automatically suspended” if India fails to invite Pakistan for the mandatory May meeting of the treaty.

Sources in the office of Pakistan’s Permanent Commissioner for Indus Basin Treaty say that both sides normally start preparations for the meeting by the end of March. It takes more than six weeks to prepare agenda and travel documents for the participants.

So far, India has neither contacted nor invited Pakistan to the meeting which “must be held before May 31” to keep the treaty alive. The meeting is held alternately in India and Pakistan and is scheduled for New Delhi this year.

Sources said the fate of the meeting would determine the future of the treaty as well as Indian intentions. “If India fails to invite Pakistan, as the case seems so far, the Indus Basin Water Treaty will effectively be suspended,” they asserted. They said that India had already held the treaty in abeyance by ending all contacts with Pakistan since December when the border tension ran high. Since then, a pick-and-choose attitude has characterized the Indian policy; it has been transferring routine water data, but has refused to oblige on crucially important flood warnings and status of regulators on Chenab and Jehlum Rivers.

This ambivalence provided India with a justification for officially claiming adherence to the treaty, though practically it is strangulating the treaty by suspending its executive part. Indian commissioner, under the treaty, cannot snap contacts with his Pakistani counterpart because the latter, as a lower riparian, needs data regularly.

The breach of the treaty will be formalized once India refuses or fails to attend the meeting. Pakistan, sources claimed, would then be in a position to move the international court.

Besides, a meeting of various ministries has been convened on the request of the Pakistan’s commissioner to apprise officials on the “slow death” of the treaty as well as the new ground realities being created by India on the rivers that belong to Pakistan, says an official of the water and power ministry.

Pakistani side must take up this matter as urgently as possible. India cannot build anything on Chenab that disturbs it natural flow. The dropped inflow of water during early January worried the water watchers, but failed to invoke an official action.

Punjab irrigation officials feigned ignorance about the possible meeting. The department only gets involved if the commissioner feels the need for technical support. But the department has so far neither been contacted for any such meeting, sources said.