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The Indus Basin Water Treaty will be 'automatically suspended' if India fails to invite Pakistan for the mandatory May meeting of the accord, a media report said on Monday.
India has neither contacted nor invited Pakistan to the meeting which 'must be held before May 31' to keep the treaty alive, Pakistani newspaper Dawn said in report.
The meeting is held alternately in India and Pakistan and is scheduled for New Delhi this year, the report said.
Both sides normally start preparations for the meeting by the end of March. It takes more than six weeks to draw up the agenda and travel documents for the participants, the daily said quoting sources in the office of Pakistan's Permanent Commissioner for Indus Basin Treaty.
They said India has already held the treaty in abeyance by ending all contacts with Pakistan since December when border tensions ran high.
"Since then, a pick-and-choose attitude has characterised the Indian policy; it has been transferring routine water data, but has refused to oblige on crucially important flood warnings and status of regulators on Chenab and Jhelum rivers," the report said.
"This ambivalence provided India with a justification for officially claiming adherence to the treaty, though practically it is strangulating the treaty by suspending its executive part. Indian commissioner, under the treaty, cannot snap contacts with his Pakistani counterpart because the latter, as a lower riparian, needs data regularly," the report said.
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