‘No Jurisdiction’: India Rejects Hague Court’s Indus Waters Treaty Ruling

The Indus Waters Treaty’s suspension remains in force and the Hague-based Permanent Court Of Arbitration “has no jurisdiction on India’s sovereign decisions” after it urged New Delhi to uphold the water-sharing treaty with Pakistan.

“This so called Court was constituted by the World Bank in patent breach of the terms of the Treaty and India categorically rejects its so-called award, just as it has firmly rejected all prior pronouncements by this illegally constituted body,” the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.

The statement further underscores that India has never recognised the existence in law of this “illegally-constituted body”, and has “consistently maintained that the very establishment of this alleged arbitral body constitutes a grave violation of the Indus Waters Treaty”.

The Court of Arbitration, the world’s oldest permanent forum for international dispute, further said that India had no justification for ending or suspending the agreement and that the treaty between the two subcontinent arch-rivals remained fully in force.

Executed in September 1960, the Indus Waters Treaty was designed to govern the sharing of the Indus River system between India and Pakistan.

A day after the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22 last year that claimed 26 lives, India took a series of punitive measures against Pakistan, including suspending the water-sharing framework.(courtesy NDTV)(updated on 31st August 2026)