DELHI: Flooding across eastern Pakistan has intensified after heavy rains combined with uncontrolled water flows from India, Pakistani officials said on Friday. They blamed New Delhi’s suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty and the collapse of gates on the Madhopur barrage for worsening the disaster.
Torrential monsoon rains have battered both countries this week, with more storms forecast over the weekend. On Friday, floodwaters reached the outskirts of Lahore and threatened to engulf Jhang, in what authorities described as the worst flooding in nearly four decades.
The two neighbours share rivers originating in India that flow into Pakistan, governed for more than sixty years under the Indus Waters Treaty. India suspended the pact earlier this year after an attack that killed 26 people, which it accused Islamabad of supporting — a charge Pakistan has rejected.
Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said India had stopped providing vital river flow data. “We could have managed better if we had the information,” he told Reuters, stressing that the treaty’s suspension had left Pakistan unable to prepare.
Footage aired by Indian media showed that the central section of the Madhopur barrage on the Ravi River was washed away by surging waters. Pakistani officials said the collapse unleashed uncontrolled flows across the border, flooding parts of Lahore. An Indian source confirmed the gates had failed but denied deliberately releasing water, saying the situation was being managed upstream at the Ranjit Sagar Dam.
Pakistani officials noted that India had issued four flood alerts since Sunday, including one on Friday, but without sharing detailed data. Since the suspension of the treaty, warnings are now relayed through India’s embassy in Islamabad rather than between water authorities.
Iqbal, whose constituency of Narowal lies near the Indian border and has been badly hit, said climate change was making the monsoon increasingly erratic. “Climate change is not a bilateral issue,” he said. “It concerns all humanity.”
On Friday, authorities blew up a section of the Chenab River’s bank to divert water away from Jhang. More than one million people have been evacuated from eastern Pakistan this week as three overflowing rivers from India continue to pose a grave threat.
According to the National Disaster Management Authority, 820 people have died so far this monsoon season. The flooded eastern belt, home to half of Pakistan’s 240 million people and the country’s agricultural heartland, has suffered widespread crop devastation.
