Shashi Tharoor calls Indus Waters Treaty ‘more of a symbolic gesture’, rejects Pakistan’s ‘neutral’ probe offer

Rejecting Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s offer for a ‘neutral’ probe into the Pahalgam terror attack, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Sunday hit out at the former, highlighted the “human cost of people being forced to go back”, and called the Indus Waters Treaty “more of a symbolic gesture at this point”.

While talking to ANI in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram, Tharoor said, “…When the government wants to send a strong signal that normal relations are no longer possible, ordinary human beings inevitably become the victims… The Indus Water Treaty is more of a symbolic gesture at this point.”

Tharoor was referring to a slew of measures that the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has taken following the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam district which killed 26 people and injured several others on April 22. 

Taking note of the cross-border linkages of the terrorist attack, the CCS held The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 in abeyance with immediate effect, and cancelled the visas issued to Pakistani nationals under the SAARC Visa Exemption Scheme (SVES), directing them to leave India by April 27. Pakistani nationals with medical visas have been given time till April 29 to leave India, according to a Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) statement.