On May 26, 2008, Federal Minister for Water and Power of Pakistan, Raja Pervez Ashraf, said that the "Kalabagh Dam would not be constructed" and the project has been cancelled.[citation needed] He said due to the "opposition from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and other stakeholders, the project was no longer feasible"

Sindh is the lower riparian and strongest opponent of KBD and politicians presents many objections against the proposed dam:
That their share of the Indus water will be curtailed as water from the Kalabagh will go to irrigate farmlands in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, at their cost. Sindhis hold that their rights as the lower riparian have precedence according to international water distribution law.
The coastal regions of Sindh require a constant flow of water down the Indus into the Arabian Sea so that the flowing water can keep the seawater from intruding inland. Such seawater intrusion would literally turn vast areas of Sindh's coast into an arid saline desert, and destroy Sindh's coastal mangroves.
With the construction of dams, such as Mangla Dam and Tarbela Dam across the Indus, Sindhis have seen the once-mighty Indus turned into a shadow of its former glory downstream of the Kotri Barrage up to Hyderabad. They fear that there simply is not enough water for another large dam across the Indus, let alone three.
Claims that the current flow of Indus river downstream of Kotri Barrage is only because of rain. Hence in years of low rain, Sindh fears the Indus would stop flowing.
Damming the Indus has already caused a number of environmental problems that have not yet addressed. Silt deposited in the proposed Kalabagh dam would further curtail the water storage capacity of Manchar Lake and other lakes and of wetlands like Haleji Lake.
President Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and other leaders, have promised "iron-clad constitutional guarantees" to ensure that Sindh gets its fair share of water. However, these assurances mean little to most Sindhis, who claim that even the earlier 1991 Indus Water-Sharing Accord, which is a document already guaranteed by the constitutional body, the Council of Common Interests, has been violated, and that Punjab has "stolen" their water without any concrete evidence.

NWFP claims that the running of Cheshma-Jhelum link canal and over drawing of water from Tarbela is a common feature.
The entire system and canal of Ghazi- Barotha hydro electric project runs in Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa, however the electricity generating turbines were installed just 500 meters inside Punjab so that the royalty is denied to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.[citation needed].
While the reservoir will be in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the dam's electricity-generating turbines will be just across the provincial border in Punjab. Therefore, Punjab would get royalties from the central government in Islamabad for generating electricity.[citation needed]. Although, Punjab has also agreed not to claim any royalty on generation of resources from Kalabagh dam.
Concerns that large areas of Nowshera District would be submerged by the dam and even wider areas would suffer from water-logging and salinity as has occurred with the Tarbela Dam. As the water will be stored in Kalabagh dam as proposed, that will give water level rise to the city that is about 200 km away from the proposed location.[citation needed]. However, engineers having expertise on dam construction repeatedly deny the opinion that Nowshera city could be submerged by the dam lake.
Punjab follows a paradox policy when it comes to canals to be taken out from Kalabagh Dam. It talks of right bank canal which will supply water to D I Khan, but when talking to Sindh, it denies construction of right bank canal being infeasible

Balochistan is not directly affected by the dam as such. Rather, most nationalist Baloch claim the dam is an instance of grievances of smaller provinces not being taken into account. They have however, not included the dam in any of their statements after its cancellation.


All Pakistanis agree that Pakistan faces a severe water shortage, and that some form of water management must be implemented soon. Many point out that even if work on Kalabagh were to start tomorrow, it would still take at least three years to complete and commission such a large dam. In the meantime, the water situation would continue to worsen. Smaller dams, barrages, and canals must be built before that, and water conservation techniques introduced.
The WAPDA for years repeatedly changed its statistics on the dam, to the point where no-one in Pakistan now believes any of its figures.[citation needed] Government of Pakistan formed a technical committee, headed by A. N. G. Abbasi, to study the technical merits of the Kalabagh dam vis-a-vis the other two. The four-volume technical report concluded that Bhasha or Katzarah dam should be built before Kalabagh, further complicating matters. The report also stated that Kalabagh and Bhasha Dams could be considered feasible.