‘No role to play beyond…’: World Bank President Ajay Banga on Indus Waters Treaty suspension

Dismissing media speculation about the World Bank's involvement in resolving the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty, World Bank President Ajay Banga said that the institution's role is strictly as a facilitator.

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“We have no role to play beyond a facilitator. There’s a lot of speculation in the media about how the World Bank will step in and fix the problem, but it’s all bunk. The World Bank’s role is merely as a facilitator,” World Bank President Ajay Banga said on the Indus Waters Treaty suspension.

Following the Pahalgam terror attack that resulted in the deaths of 26 people, mostly tourists, the Indian government implemented various measures against Pakistan.

Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri on Indus Waters Treaty

Earlier on Thursday, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri spoke about India's decisions concerning the Indus Waters Treaty. He said, “I want to address some issues that have been raised related to the Indus Waters Treaty, and the disinformation that has been raised in this regard as well. The fact is that there have been fundamental changes in the circumstances in which the Indus Waters Treaty was concluded. And they required, they called for a reassessment of the obligations under the treaty. Over the last year and a half to two years, India has been in communication with the Government of Pakistan. We've sent several notices to them requesting for negotiations to discuss a modification of the treaty.”

He added, “India has, for six plus decades now, honoured the treaty, even during periods when Pakistan imposed multiple wars on us, and even when relations were adversarial. Pakistan is the one that has been acting in violation of the treaty, deliberately creating legal roadblocks in India, exercising its legitimate rights on the Western Rivers. Any projects that India sought to build on the Eastern Rivers, and even on the Western Rivers, which we are allowed to by the treaty, were always challenged by Pakistan, thereby hampering our rights to utilise our legitimate waters under the treaty.”

During a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 23, India decided to put the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 on hold until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably renounces its support for cross-border terrorism, and closed the integrated Attari Check Post.

Meanwhile, World Bank President Ajay Banga met the Uttar Pradesh chief minister in the state's capital on Friday. The World Bank chief is on a day-long visit to Lucknow to attend a host of meetings and events.

“His visit reflects the increasing global interest in Uttar Pradesh's rapid development under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, as the state moves steadily toward its ambitious goal of becoming a $1 trillion economy,” the state government said in a statement.

He is scheduled to participate in a series of meetings and programmes at Hotel Taj, including a roundtable discussion with stakeholders in the presence of Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Singh, the statement added.

Separately, the World Bank, in a report, recently asserted that the extreme poverty (living on less than USD 2.15 per day) fell from 16.2 per cent in 2011-12 to 2.3 per cent in 2022-23, lifting 171 million people in India above this line. 

(With inputs from ANI)