ISLAMABAD: Despite losing a second water dispute to India in a row, the federal and provincial authorities continue wrestling over interprovincial matters to have more control over the domestic water regulator the Indus River System Authority.

At the heart of the dispute is the position of Irsa`s member federal lying vacant since October 2010.

After the federal government`s move to exercise its discretion in the selection of a suitable candidate was stayed by the Sindh High Court a few days ago, the centre has proposed a new way out without any success.

Sources told Dawn that on the demand of the National Assembly`s standing committee on water and power, the ministry of water and power has proposed the appointment of a person from Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) as member of Irsa and has sought the authority`s comments on the proposal.

The sources said that while Irsa`s member from Sindh has vehemently opposed the proposal, other members were of the view that the matter was legally and politically too complicated to be commented upon upfront without consulting the provinces and legal experts and then taking it up at a formal meeting of the authority.Therefore, the Irsa chairman has informed the water and power ministry that it would convene a meeting of the authority on Dec 26 to reach a conclusion. The Irsa member from Sindh has, however, said that Fata was neither a stakeholder nor beneficiary in Irsa even though it contributed nominal water to the Indus system and hence it did not fall in the scope of 1991 water apportionment accord.

Therefore, the Irsa member could not come from Fata, he has argued.

A legal expert on provincial water rights, who declined to be named because he had represented the federal government in an international dispute, said the question to appoint a member from a province or the centre was outside the domain of Irsa. It was therefore illogical for the authority to even consider if a member from a non-member entity, whether it was Fata or Gilgit-Baltistan could be inducted into Irsa, he said.

The expert said the matter simply was of inter-provincial nature and the only appropriate forum to consider nomination of an outside member was the Council of Common Interests that had originally approved the water apportionment accord of 1991 and the establishment of Irsa.

He said the government should have been careful in view of the stay order issued by the Sindh High Court on a petition of Ghulam Abbas Leghari, a candidate from Sindh, and Zamir Ghumro Advocate.

The water and power ministry had in the last week of November asked the provinces and Wapda to recommend one candidate each so that a nomination could be made out of five panellists by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The Sindh government contestedthe move and nominated Engineer Ghulam Abbas Leghari as member federal. It argued that under an executive order issued by former president retired General Pervez Musharraf in 2000, which still legally stood ground, it was the prerogative of Sindh to have two positions on the five-member Irsa one as member Sindh and another as member federal.

Interestingly, the ministry of water and power forwarded Sindh`s nomination to the prime minister with the recommendation that Mr Leghari be appointed as member Sindh, forgetting that another legally appointed member Syed Mazhar Ali Shah was already working in that position.

When that was pointed out by the prime minister`s secretariat, the ministry immediately withdrew the summary and requested the provinces and Wapda to send nominations for federal member.

The Punjab government, particularly Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, has been critical of the decision to have two members of Sindh domicile in Irsa. He had suggested to the federal government to appoint Irsa`s federal member from Azad Kashmir or Gilgit-Baltistan to ensure impartial decision-making by the water regulator in the presence of equal representation from the four provinces.

In January 2011, the Sindh Assembly adopted a counter resolution asking the federal government to continue appointing federal member from Sindh.

To avoid a controversy, the federal government has not filled the post since October 2010 after completion of the tenure contract of Bashir Dahar.