India not causing water shortage in Pakistan: Irsa

ISLAMABAD: Denying the general assumption that India is responsible for water shortage in Pakistan, the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) Chairman Rao Irshad Ali says media reports that India is getting more water than its share is nothing but propaganda.
In a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Water and Power, chaired by Senator Iqbal Zafar Jhagra held here the other day, Rao Irshad said India was using less than its allocated share under the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) signed between the two countries.
The IWT is a water-sharing treaty brokered by the World Bank (then the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) signed in Karachi on September 19, 1960 by the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President of Pakistan Ayub Khan, a private television channel reported Saturday.
The committee also decided to conduct a performance audit of the K-Electric through the Auditor General of Pakistan to judge its performance.
The proposal for conducting the performance audit was put forward by the PPP Senator Taj Haider.
Taj Haider suggested that the standing committee chairman should write a letter to the Auditor General of Pakistan requesting the audit of power utility, as the company resisted sharing its data with the auditors.
Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali told the committee that under an agreement with the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC), the K-Electric (former KESC) was to receive 650 MW electricity from the national grid but on occasions it allegedly extracted up to 950 MW from the system and did not switch on its own generators.
Abid Sher Ali also informed the committee that the Nepra had issued a legal notice to K-Electric on the current state of affairs and will conduct a thorough probe.