INDIAN Home Minister Amit Shah said at the weekend India will “never” restore the Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan, and would seek to divert Pakistan’s water supply into India.

The 1960 treaty was suspended in April, following a terrorist attack in Pahalgam in the disputed Kashmir region which India blames on Pakistan.

Over three-quarters of Pakistan’s renewable water supply originates outside its borders, most of it from the Indus river system flowing from neighbouring India. The treaty regulates the two countries’ use of the water and prohibits India from diverting or damming three major rivers, including the Indus itself, as it would cut the water supply to Pakistan’s agricultural land and major cities including Karachi and Lahore.

Mr Shah, of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu chauvinist BJP party, said: “We will take water that was flowing to Pakistan to Rajasthan by constructing a canal. Pakistan will be starved of water that it has been getting unjustifiably.”

Pakistan has previously said it would consider Indian disruption of its water supply as grounds for war. Both countries are nuclear-armed.