KARACHI, Oct 5: The Pakistan People’s Party on Wednesday condemned announcement by the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) that water shortages would not be distributed under paragraph 2 of the 1991 water apportionment accord and would be distributed on the basis of ‘historical use’.

In a joint statement, leader of the opposition in the Sindh Assembly Nisar Ahmad Khuhro and the party’s central information secretary Taj Haider said that any basis of sharing shortages other than the one explicitly specified in the accord would be a blatant violation of the constitution.

However, ever since 1999, when the country had gone under military dictatorship, this strange innovation of sharing shortages on ‘historical use basis’ was being applied, they said, adding that this had turned the lower districts of Sindh into a virtual waste-land.

They pointed out that as early as in 2001, the federal law ministry had held that introducing any other basis of sharing shortages was against the constitution and Irsa had to withdraw its own notification allowing sharing shortages on ‘historical use basis’. However, in spite of withdrawing the notification the distribution in succeeding years on the unconstitutional basis.

Mr Khuhro and Mr Haider pointed out that Irsa itself had been constituted under a specific clause contained in the body of the inter-provincial accord 1991. Its duty was to see that the accord was faithfully implemented.

They recalled that the accord had enjoined that water reservoirs would be operated in such a manner that the irrigation needs of the provinces would have a priority. Instead of releasing the stored water in right quantities and timings to fulfil the indents of the provinces, water levels in the reservoirs were being kept unnecessarily very high in order to generate maximum electricity. The ground situation was that the reservoirs were obstructing the flow of the rivers and depriving the lower riparian of its share instead of storing excess input to ensure supplies to them at the time of need, the PPP leaders said.