LAHORE, Aug 10: The Indus River System Authority on Saturday acceded to the Punjab’s demand for “not cutting water supplies at this point of time” and started releasing water to the province according to its needs.

The Punjab had recently written to Irsa against its decision of reducing water supplies when cotton crop was at the flowering stage. It argued its case on the basis of loss that reduction of water could cause to the standing crop and maintained that the loss would be immense if the flowers began falling. Any subsequent rain could fill the dams but would not put flowers back on the plants.

The Irsa agreed, and on Saturday it released 52,000 cusecs of water to the Punjab from the Indus arm that met its full demand. The Punjab needed 60,000 cusecs of water from the Mangla arm (combined supplies of Jehlum and Chenab rivers). Instead, it received 83,000 cusecs from Mangla on Saturday which was 23,000 cusecs more than its current demand.

According to an official of the Punjab Irrigation and Power department, all canals except for Taunsa and Panjnad, were running at their full capacity. Even these two canals would start receiving full supplies in next three days as surplus water from Mangla reaches the spot, he said.

The authority has decided to keep 60,000 cusecs of water for storage at Tarebela and release the rest. That amount of water would roughly fill the lake by two feet daily and replenish the dam by 31st.

Since inflow at Tarbela has gone well above 200,000 cusecs over the last three days, the Punjab should not face any water crisis for the time being at least, he added.

The combined river flow on Saturday registered a further improvement with total supplies going up to 380,900 cusecs, of which 244,100 cusecs were released for irrigation purposes and the rest of 136,800 cusecs stored.

The Indus river at Tarbela had an inflow of 261,100 cusecs and outflow of 127,400. The lake level stood at 1508.02 feet against the optimum level of 1550 feet.