ISLAMABAD, Oct 17: With the post of federal member of the Indus River System Authority lying vacant for almost two years, Chairman of the Federal Flood Commission (FFC) Asjad Imtiaz Ali will work as chairman of Irsa from Thursday.

Mr Asjad Imtiaz will be the first government official to hold the positions of two chairmen, of Irsa and FFC, at the same time.

Sindh’s member Syed Mazhar Ali Shah relinquished the charge of Irsa chairman on Wednesday after completing his one-year tenure.

Under an order of the Musharraf government, the Irsa Act of 1992 was amended to shift the headquarters of the authority from Lahore to Islamabad and to have a Sindh-domiciled member on the authority as its federal member. As a result, Sindh has had two members on the authority for more than a decade.

The law required that the post of chairman should be held by members from Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh and the federal government, in that order, for a period of one year. The law also required that the chairman of the flood commission would function as federal member in the event of the post falling vacant for any reason.

As the Punjab government led by the Pakistan Muslim League-N objected to the presence of two members from Sindh on Irsa, the PPP government did not appoint a full-time federal member and the job was looked after by the FFC chairman.

Now that the one-year tenure of Sindh member Syed Mazhar Ali Shah has ended, Mr Asjad Imtiaz would take over as chairman of the authority because the post of federal member has been lying vacant for two years.An Irsa official confirmed that Gen Musharraf’s 1992 order was still valid because it was neither rescinded nor amended by the PPP government. But since the FFC chairman has to act as the federal member in the absence of a full-time federal member, he would also function as Irsa chairman till such time a permanent arrangement was made.

Meanwhile, with declining irrigation requirements for crops, the provinces have started temporarily closing down perennial canals and have reduced water withdrawals from major reservoirs.

An Irsa official told Dawn on Wednesday that Punjab had scaled down its water requirements for irrigation from 37,000 cusecs to 17,000 cusecs while Sindh has reduced its indent from 50,000 cusecs to 45,000 cusecs.

Punjab was drawing 25,000 cusecs from downstream Chashma that was reduced to 12,000 cusecs while its withdrawal through Chashma-Jhelum canal has also been cut down from 12,000 to 5,000 cusecs.

The official said the river flows had declined in recent weeks but those were in line with projections made by the water regulator on the basis of historical data. He said the annual canal closure would start in the last week of December and continue till the end of January for maintenance.