This could be potentia­lly damaging for key cash crops like cotton, whose output has already slum­ped to multi-decade lows, reports Dawn News.

As a result, a meeting of the advisory committee of the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) on Thursday decided with a consensus to continue with a three-tier formula for distributing water shares among the provinces, as currently in practice.

The meeting — presided over by Asjad Imtiaz Ali, Irsa’s chairman and federal member — concluded that Punjab and Sindh would face a 27pc water shortage in the early Kharif and 10pc in the late Kharif season.