BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 35 of 150

Correct — A, Jhelum. The treaty settles this by definition, not by geography. Article I(6) of the Indus Waters Treaty 1960 states that the term 'Western Rivers' means 'The Indus, The Jhelum and The Chenab taken together', while Article I(5) states that 'Eastern Rivers' means 'The Sutlej, The Beas and The Ravi taken together'. The Jhelum is therefore named by the treaty itself in the western set — the set allocated to Pakistan — which makes it the single river on this list that is not one of India's three eastern rivers. Ravi and Sutlej are both in the eastern set, so exactly one option fails the test and the exception is one river rather than two. BPSC's own remark, published when it disposed of the objections to this paper, says the same thing in a line: the Jhelum is a western river and the other two are eastern rivers of the Indus basin. The allocation carries sharply different rights on either side of the line. Article II(1) gives India 'unrestricted use' of all the waters of the Eastern Rivers, whereas Article III(2) obliges India to let all the waters of the Western Rivers flow on to Pakistan, keeping back only narrowly defined domestic, non-consumptive, specified agricultural and run-of-the-river hydroelectric uses. That asymmetry is why every treaty dispute India has faced — Baglihar on the Chenab, the 330 MW Kishanganga on a tributary of the Jhelum, the 850 MW Ratle on the Chenab — has turned on the design of a project on a western river, and never on the eastern three. The treaty was signed at Karachi on 19 September 1960 by Jawaharlal Nehru and Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, with W. A. B. Iliff signing for the World Bank, and took effect retrospectively from 1 April 1960.

• (b)Ravi — The Ravi is one of the three Eastern Rivers named in Article I(5), so it cannot be the exception the question is hunting for. It rises in the Bara Bhangal area of Himachal Pradesh, runs past Chamba and then along a stretch of the India-Pakistan boundary before finally crossing into Pakistan, and India's use of it became unrestricted once the treaty's Transition Period closed. It draws guesses because it is the smallest of the eastern three and the one least often named in headlines, so a half-remembered 'Ravi, Beas, Sutlej' tends to shed the Ravi first.
• (c)Sutlej — Also an Eastern River under Article I(5), and the longest of the three. The Sutlej rises in Tibet near Lake Rakshastal, enters India through Himachal Pradesh, and feeds the Bhakra reservoir and the canal command that the eastern allocation was designed to make possible — which is precisely why India held out for it. Being correctly inside the eastern set, it is not the odd one out. It attracts guesses because its Tibetan source makes it feel like the outsider of the group, but source has nothing to do with the treaty's labels.
• (d)More than one of the above — Only one of the three listed rivers fails the test — Ravi and Sutlej are both named in the treaty's eastern set — so the exception is a single river and the combined option is a pure decoy. It is worth seeing how rarely this option pays across the paper: it is offered on 44 of the 150 questions and the official final key marks it correct on only 6 of them. With one-third of a mark deducted for a wrong answer, reaching for (d) whenever two options look alike is a systematic way to lose marks rather than protect them.

The Indus Waters Treaty does not share rivers; it partitions them. Signed at Karachi on 19 September 1960 after nine years of negotiation begun on the initiative of World Bank President Eugene Black, it hands the three Eastern Rivers — Sutlej, Beas, Ravi — to India for unrestricted use, and the three Western Rivers — Indus, Jhelum, Chenab — to Pakistan, while permitting each country certain defined uses on the other's set. That clean partition is why the treaty has outlasted three wars: it removed any need for the two states to agree on water year by year. Its working machinery is the Permanent Indus Commission, one Commissioner from each country, which Article VIII(5) requires to meet at least once a year, alternately in India and Pakistan, normally in November. Above the Commission sits the three-rung dispute ladder that examiners return to again and again: a 'question' is handled by the Commission itself; a 'difference' goes to a Neutral Expert whose decision binds; a 'dispute' goes to an ad hoc arbitral tribunal called the Court of Arbitration. The World Bank is a signatory, but for limited and procedural purposes only — chiefly designating the individuals who fill those roles when a party asks, as it did in October 2022 in appointing a Neutral Expert and a Chairman of the Court of Arbitration over Kishanganga and Ratle. Two structural provisions are worth carrying into any answer. Article II(6) set a Transition Period running from 1 April 1960 to 31 March 1970, extendable but ending no later than 31 March 1973, during which India kept releasing eastern-river water while Pakistan built replacement canal works. And Article XII(4) provides that the treaty continues in force until terminated by a duly ratified treaty concluded by both governments — there is no unilateral withdrawal clause anywhere in it.

Two different mistakes are on offer here, and only one of them is about rivers. The first is reading 'eastern' as a compass direction. It is not one: it is a defined term, and Article I(5) fixes the eastern set as Sutlej, Beas and Ravi 'taken together' while Article I(6) fixes the western set as Indus, Jhelum and Chenab. A river does not qualify by flowing east; it qualifies by appearing on the list. The workable hook is where each set does its work — the eastern trio irrigate Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan through Bhakra and the Indira Gandhi Canal, while the western trio run through Ladakh, Jammu and the Kashmir Valley and then leave for Pakistan. The Jhelum is the archetype of the western set: it rises at Verinag in Anantnag, flows north-west through Srinagar and Wular Lake, and the treaty is explicit enough about it to define 'The Jhelum Main' as extending up to Verinag. Any candidate who has ever placed the Jhelum on a map already has the answer, and the single discriminating fact is exactly that — the eastern three are Sutlej, Beas and Ravi, and the Jhelum is not among them. The second mistake is topical. On the exam date of 13 September 2025 this treaty was in the news, because India's Cabinet Committee on Security had decided on 23 April 2025 — the day after the Pahalgam attack in which 26 civilians were killed — to hold the treaty in abeyance until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism. Abeyance suspends India's observance of the treaty; it does not reassign a single river, and it leaves the allocation this question tests exactly where Article I put it in 1960.

• Article I(5) of the Indus Waters Treaty defines the Eastern Rivers as 'The Sutlej, The Beas and The Ravi taken together'; Article I(6) defines the Western Rivers as 'The Indus, The Jhelum and The Chenab taken together'.
• The treaty was signed at Karachi on 19 September 1960 by Jawaharlal Nehru and Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, with W. A. B. Iliff signing for the World Bank; it took effect retrospectively from 1 April 1960.
• Article II(1) gives India unrestricted use of all the waters of the Eastern Rivers, while Article III(2) obliges India to let the Western Rivers flow on, retaining only domestic, non-consumptive, specified agricultural and run-of-the-river hydroelectric uses.
• The dispute ladder has three rungs — 'questions' to the Permanent Indus Commission, which Article VIII(5) requires to meet at least once a year alternately in India and Pakistan; 'differences' to a Neutral Expert whose decision binds; 'disputes' to an ad hoc Court of Arbitration. The World Bank's role is limited to designating the individuals concerned.
• Article XII(4) provides that the treaty stays in force until terminated by a duly ratified treaty concluded by both governments — there is no unilateral exit — which is why the Cabinet Committee on Security decision of 23 April 2025, after the Pahalgam attack of 22 April, placed the treaty 'in abeyance' rather than ending it.

• Reading 'eastern' as a compass direction — it is a defined term of the treaty, fixed by Article I(5) as Sutlej, Beas and Ravi, and a river qualifies only by being on that list
• Forgetting the Beas. Questions routinely name Ravi and Sutlej and leave the third eastern river to be supplied from memory, and the Beas is the one that goes missing
• Reading India's abeyance decision of April 2025 as a change in the allocation — it suspends India's observance of the treaty; it does not reassign any river, and Article XII(4) allows termination only by a treaty concluded by both governments

BPSC asks the three-plus-three split as a bare odd-one-out — three river names, one combination option, one mark, no reasoning needed beyond a memorised list. UPSC almost never asks the list itself. In 2009 it asked whether the Baglihar project on the Chenab had been built within the treaty's parameters, and in 2021 it asked which of Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi and Sutlej joins the Indus directly. Both need the drainage map and the treaty's rights regime rather than the roll-call, so learn the six rivers as one hydrological system first and lay the treaty labels on top of it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Indus Waters Treaty, 1960, which one of the following sets consists only of the Western Rivers?

  • (a)Ravi, Beas, Sutlej
  • (b)Indus, Jhelum, Chenab
  • (c)Indus, Ravi, Chenab
  • (d)Jhelum, Beas, Sutlej

  Answer(b) Indus, Jhelum, Chenab — the western trio allocated to Pakistan under Article I(6); Ravi, Beas and Sutlej are the eastern trio allocated to India under Article I(5).

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Indus Waters Treaty, a 'difference' between the two countries is referred to

  • (a)The Permanent Indus Commission
  • (b)A Neutral Expert
  • (c)An ad hoc Court of Arbitration
  • (d)The International Court of Justice

  Answer(b) A Neutral Expert — 'questions' go to the Permanent Indus Commission, 'differences' to a Neutral Expert whose decision is binding, and 'disputes' to an ad hoc Court of Arbitration. The International Court of Justice has no role under the treaty.