There was a window of opportunity in 2010 itself when the G-B Appellate Supreme Court had decided on the relative shares of the two beneficiary provinces without reference to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.  The failure of the federal government to act in time is a poor reflection on the federal structure in Pakistan and the insensitivity of the Federal administration to address issues beyond the borders of the federal capital region.

Viewed against this reality, the invitation to the chief ministers of Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) is a welcome development. Strangely, rather intriguingly, the announcement of the proposed CMs’ meeting did not come from Islamabad but from an officer in Gilgit, who preferred to remain an unidentified source quoted by the media.

“The chief ministers of both regions have been summoned to Islamabad for a meeting with the prime minister,” an official in the G-B Assembly said, according to a local daily. The K-P government has been asked not to take the issue to the Supreme Court, and to instead find an out-of-court solution.

The K-P government had written a letter last year to the prime minister, asking him to help ‘K-P get its right’ over the 4,500-megawatt dam. The state lays claim over about eight kilometres of land near the Diamer-Bhasha dam which is being built on Indus River, about  40 kilometres downstream of Chilas Town, the headquarters of G-B’s Diamer district.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly passed a resolution last year, claiming that eight kilometres of land on the right side of the dam was part of the province. The move infuriated the G-B government, which constituted a committee including all sitting lawmakers from Diamer valley. The committee traced documents signed between the representatives of Kohistan and Diamer during 1947, which had declared the land part of Diamer. The G-B Assembly later passed a unanimous resolution, rejecting K-P’s claim.

More than the boundary dispute, environmental concerns are crying for urgent attention. The sense of desperation is clear from an open appeal a renowned dam expert has made to the Man of the Season, the chief justice of Pakistan, Ifthikar Muhammad Chaudhry.

‘Bhasha Dam is risky for Pakistan’, said Engineer Bashir A Malik, who had a long stint at the UN and World Bank as Chief Technical Adviser. It is a know seismic zone. So storage dam is dangerous. Even the World Bank suggested Bhasha dam as a hydel power project. Risk is high in building the 922-feet RCC dam. Even China’s RCC dam is no more than 620 feet high’, he said in his appeal.