Chandigarh, May 22 -- Former union minister Pawan Kumar Bansal has criticised Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for his statements that former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had done injustice to India by signing the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan. In a statement, Bansal said, "This only betrays his utter ignorance of historical facts."

Bansal, who previously held the Union water resources portfolio, said that suspending the treaty in the wake of the Pahalgam terrorist attack is an entirely different matter from the context in which it was signed in 1960. He explained that post-Partition, the canal system built by the British primarily lay in Pakistan, while India controlled the headworks. A temporary agreement in 1947...