New Delhi: After the World Bank announced the setting up of two parallel processes to decide the Kishenganga dispute with Pakistan, India on Wednesday gave a guarded response that it will “assess the matter”.
On October 17, the World Bank announced the appointment of Michel Lino as the neutral expert and Sean Murphy as the chairman of the Court of Arbitration regarding the Kishenganga and Ratle hydroelectric power plants.
In its first response, India’s Ministry of External Affairs only said it would first look into the implications.
“We have noted the World Bank’s announcement to concurrently appoint a Neutral Expert and a Chair of the Court of Arbitration in the ongoing matter related to the Kishenganga and Ratle projects. Recognising the World Bank’s admission in its announcement that ‘carrying out two processes concurrently poses practical and legal challenges’, India will assess the matter,” said the MEA press note.
As a signatory to the 1960 India-Pakistan Indus Water treaty, the World Bank is the facilitator in establishing the dispute resolution mechanism.
The World Bank’s 2018 factsheet notes that the neighbours disagreed whether the design features of the two 330-megawatt Kishenganga and 850 MW Ratla hydroelectric power plants.
Both the plants are located on tributaries of the Jhelum and Chenab rivers, which are identified as Western rivers to which Pakistan has unrestricted use with some exceptions, per the factsheet. India is permitted to construct hydroelectric power facilities on these rivers, but subject to certain constraints.
After the two countries failed to reach any understanding under the Permanent Indus Commission, Pakistan approached the World Bank to set up a Court of Arbitration to look into its concerns. India, however, asked for the appointment of a Neutral Expert to resolve the dispute.
Unable to reach an understanding, World Bank put a “pause” on the two separate processes “to allow the two countries to consider alternative ways to resolve their disagreements”. “Both processes initiated by the respective countries were advancing at the same time, creating a risk of contradictory outcomes that could potentially endanger the Treaty,” said the multilateral financial institution in December 2016.
Over the next six years, several high-level meetings were convened to find a compromise over a single dispute resolution mechanism, but to no avail.
In March this year, World Bank wrote to India and Pakistan that it had decided to resume the two separate processes. “The World Bank continues to share the concerns of the Parties that carrying out the two appointments concurrently poses practical and legal risks. However, the lack of success in finding an acceptable solution over the past five years is also a risk to the Treaty itself,” it argued.
When announcing the appointment of the experts this week, World Bank reiterated that it “shared” the concern that having two different processes in parallel does lead to “practical and legal challenges”.
It, however, expressed confidence that the “highly qualified experts appointed as Neutral Experts and as members of the Court of Arbitration will engage in fair and careful consideration of their jurisdictional mandate, as they are empowered to do by the Treaty”.