HYDERABAD: The Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) which met here on Monday under the chairmanship of its President Syed Mahmood Nawaz Shah resented the recent decision of Indus River System Authority (Irsa) to arbitrarily reduce water flows to Sindh by 25pc.

It deplored that such a decision was taken despite surplus water being available in the system, and that too at a time when water requirement would be reaching its peak in coming days.

The board urged Irsa to take a prudent step and release already available water to Sindh without further delay to prevent any major losses to the Kharif crops.

The meeting noted that Irsa decided to curtail water releases from Chashma to Sindh to 100,000 cusecs from the existing 133,000 cusecs. It would take another 10 days to reach the irrigation system of Sindh.

It said that by that time, sowing of paddy, for which seed has already been planted, would need to be transplanted, meaning that additional 1.8m would be required. This is, in fact, in addition to other Kharif crops like cotton, sugar cane etc.

The meeting noted that this reduction is being done when combined storages of Tarbela, Mangla and Chashma have more than 3.9MAF (million acre feet) and inflow in the system is more than the outflow, meaning that water is being stored in dams.

It is important to understand that this arbitrary reduction is being carried out by Irsa on the pretext that Sindh used more water in last months.

This additional water had never been indented by Sindh; regardless of reason for the release of additional water, simple fact that Sindh had not demanded additional water means that this water could not be subtracted from its share according to the Water Apportionment Accord 1991.

SAB fears that the shortage would lead to rotation and closure of distributaries. At this juncture, temperatures are high; plant requirement is among the highest, as evapotranspiration rate was high. Therefore, storing water in dams in this situation would undermine the agricultural economy and the Irsa decision would inflict heavy losses on the lower riparian.

It needs to be understood that unlike Punjab, Sindh does not have underground water to supplement severe shortage in canals.

The meeting was attended by Dr Zulfiqar Yousfani, Dr Bashir Nizamani, Syed Nadeem Shah, Aslam Marri, Imran Bozdar, Taha Memon, Dr Ali Reza Mirjat, Arbab Ahsan, Mustafa Nawaz Shah, Din Taj, Murad Ali Shah and others.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2026