Groundwater Regulations and the Future of Agri-Solar in Pakistan

Key Takeaways

• We found no rule that mandates smart metering of solar tube wells, a 25 HP licensing threshold, or daily pumping timers. Statements about "coming" regulation in earlier versions of this guide had no source we could find.
• Groundwater is a provincial subject. PCRWR is a federal research council, and its chairman said in 2019 that it cannot play any role in regulating groundwater.
• Licensing and zoning powers do exist in provincial law, and none we read has a horsepower threshold. A 2025 column co-written by a former Punjab on-farm water management head says installing new agricultural tube wells in Punjab does not require any permission.
• Depletion is real but uneven: up to 5 m a year in some Balochistan valleys, 6.6% of Punjab below 60 feet in 2024, and 2.61 feet a year in Lahore district. We found no source for "2 to 3 meters annually" in central Punjab.
• Whether solar raises pumping is unsettled. One study of 30 farm pairs in the Lower Indus Basin found more extraction under solar in 77% of cases, though solar flows were estimated and diesel flows measured. A Bangladesh study of a fee-for-service model found no difference in water consumed, and Punjab's own documents did not pinpoint a cause.
• Drip or sprinkler is already a condition of Punjab's PRIAT solar subsidy. The Chief Minister's programme page lists no such condition, and Balochistan's irrigation secretary said it is not currently a statutory requirement for every solarised tube well.

Introduction

Solar tube wells have spread quickly, and so has the argument that free pumping will drain aquifers. This guide separates what the laws and agencies actually say from what is repeated about them. It is not legal advice, and it does not say how an officer or court would apply a law to a particular tube well.

Who regulates groundwater?

The National Water Policy 2018 says the provincial governments shall be responsible for the management of groundwater as per provincial rules and regulations. It calls for avoiding secondary salinization by controlling or restricting pumping through a strict regulatory framework, but also says provincial governments shall be persuaded to enforce legislation. It encourages provinces to prepare a groundwater atlas, and says rain-fed areas where groundwater is available at a relatively shallow level will be given preference for solar pumping.

PCRWR, the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources, is mandated to conduct, organize, coordinate and promote research on all aspects of water, and its statutory functions include advising government and keeping a national water resources database. It has installed more than 100 observation wells in six districts along the Indian border since 2019, and IWMI developed, in collaboration with PCRWR, a groundwater information system. In a 2019 interview its chairman said that beyond research and mapping, as a federal body, PCRWR cannot play any role in regulation of groundwater resources as they are purely under provincial domain. Its 2024-25 annual report records a workshop that discussed declining water tables, uncontrolled tube well installation and the absence of coordinated groundwater governance.

What do the provincial laws say?

No law we read contains a horsepower or kilowatt threshold for licensing. The thresholds we found nearby are the twelve acres above, the 7.5 and 12.5 acre bands of Punjab's PRIAT solar subsidy, the 10, 15 and 20 kW subsidy sizes of Punjab's Chief Minister programme, and the 10 hp motor in the PRIAT solar scheme. Balochistan's 2025 Agricultural Solarization and Electricity Theft Prevention Act is the one solar tube well law we found. It comes into force on a date to be notified by the provincial government, and we did not find whether that has happened. Once in force, it prohibits subsidised consumers who take the solarization facility from reconnecting to the grid, and the text has no pumping-hour limit, meter, irrigation-method condition or capacity threshold.

IWMI's 2021 report says there is no legislation in Pakistan to restrict overexploitation of groundwater and no licensing mechanism to restrict farmers from digging tube wells. That sits oddly with the Acts above, and we read it as saying no working restriction was in place when it was written.

Is smart metering coming?

We found no mandatory metering for farm tube wells. What exists:

• Balochistan's 2014 Rules give a power to require a metering or measuring device, in restricted groundwater areas only.
• Punjab's urban plan. In September 2026 a meeting on WASA projects decided to promote smart water metering for better and responsible use of water: 1,509,288 meters are needed across Punjab and 150,900 are planned for Lahore, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi by 2029. These are water-supply meters, not tube well meters.
• Recommendations, not rules. A Mehran University specialist said sustainability in Quetta is only possible if new tube wells are restricted or banned, illegal wells sealed, and groundwater pumping is measured and priced. A Reuters report quoted an independent scientist saying Pakistan still lacks comprehensive mapping of wells and real-time monitoring of withdrawals.

How fast is groundwater falling?

Rates differ by place, period and method, so they are not interchangeable.

Nationally, the World Bank says over-exploitation affects about 18 percent of the irrigated area, and the National Water Policy says Pakistan is extracting 50 MAF from the aquifers and has already crossed the sustainable limit of safe yield. The "2 to 3 meters annually" figure for central Punjab has a likely origin in a 2020 sentence that names no place: some areas reporting a two-three metre decline per year. The only central Punjab figure we found is 5 to 9 feet annually, in a 2025 opinion column that names no source. That figure is weakly sourced, and we found no better-sourced figure for central Punjab.

Does solar pumping increase extraction?

The evidence is mixed and conditional.

• Lower Indus Basin, Pakistan. A 2025 study of 30 farmer pairs found solar pumps significantly increased groundwater pumping compared with diesel pumps, with farms using solar pumps extracting more water in 77% of cases. Its authors called for a cautious and well-informed upscaling approach. It covers the Lower Indus Basin only, and solar flows were estimated while diesel flows were measured.
• Bangladesh. An IWMI study of dry-season paddy found farmers using either type of pump consumed the same amount of water, under a fee-for-service model, and it also shows a small 4.2 percentage point increase in the area used for paddy in the dry season. IWMI notes other models, such as farmer-owned pumps, could yield different outcomes.
• Punjab. Reuters reported that documents showed depletion alongside the solar boom but did not pinpoint any cause. Six of the ten farmers it interviewed said they had started irrigating their rice paddies far more regularly, and the federal power minister said farmers drew similar amounts of water as before, though the report says he did not respond when shown farmers' accounts. The same report cites US Department of Agriculture data showing the size of rice fields in the country increasing 30 per cent between 2023 and 2025. Punjab's director general of water management said, solar or no solar, the farmers have been pumping out water to meet their needs.
• Balochistan. A reporter noted a Mastung farmer's account does not prove solarisation caused wells to dry. A geologist said solarisation is a factor, but dangerous when extraction remains unchecked. A provincial minister told the Assembly it has simultaneously led to over-pumping.
• Hours. IWMI's 2021 report describes the concern that, with no electricity cost, farmers will increase their pumping as an assumption, and calls the possibility of groundwater over-extraction a real challenge. A summary of a 2019 PCRWR talk says solar pumps can only pump 5-6 hours per day with available sunlight, while the same report notes disagreement about effective daylight hours.

Do solar subsidies require drip or sprinkler?

Not everywhere, and not as a new rule.

• Punjab PRIAT: installation of a drip or sprinkler system is a pre-requisite for solar system installation, and the farmer agrees not to use it for pumping groundwater for flood irrigation. See our drip irrigation guide.
• Punjab Chief Minister's programme: the official page lists no such condition.
• Balochistan: the irrigation secretary said high-efficiency irrigation systems have been proposed but are not currently a statutory requirement for every solarised tube well, and that there is no province-wide statutory limit on pumping hours.
• IWMI recommended considering decoupling solar pumps from the HEIS systems, which had not gained much traction.

What can solar pump drives do?

The Veichi SI23 and SI30 manuals describe an intermittent operation function, mainly used where some farmland does not need to be irrigated all the time. The drive runs for a set start time, stops for a set stop time, and repeats up to a set count. In the SI23 manual the parameters are the repeat count (0 to 1000), start time and stop time (0 to 3000 minutes), all defaulting to 0, and the function is not performed when the start or stop time is zero. The SI23 also has a general-purpose timer that can work independently of the inverter's running status. Veichi lists remote start and stop and tank-level control. INVT describes remote control through computers and phones, and its tank-full logic reports an alarm and puts the drive to sleep. We searched the text of the INVT GD100-PV manual and found no intermittent cycle or general timer, only a fault that fires when the inverter's running time passes a preset the supplier sets. The manual does not say whether that is a total or a daily time.

None of these is described as a daily pumping limit, and we found no law that requires any of them. Whether any installer sets them to cap hours is not documented. See the solar pump VFD selection guide for the manufacturers' tables.

Summary and Recommendations

• Do not assume a metering, timer or 25 HP rule exists. We found none. Also do not assume farm tube wells are free of licensing law: the provincial Acts have licence and approval clauses, and their enforcement on farm wells is unclear.
• If you farm in Balochistan, ask the Water Board or District Water Committee whether your basin is designated or restricted.
• Use the drive's tank-level cut-off so the pump stops when the tank is full.
• Pair solar with drip or sprinkler where it makes sense. In Punjab's PRIAT it is a condition.
• For the Balochistan programme itself, see our provincial roundup.

Correction, 28 October 2026: earlier versions of this guide said PCRWR was introducing mandatory smart metering and aquifer zoning, that licensing restrictions on solar tube wells above 25 HP were coming, that future subsidies would require drip or sprinkler pairing, that drives would be required to limit daily pumping, that solar pumps run continuously through daylight even when soil moisture is saturated, that unmetered over-pumping has accelerated depletion across critical basins, and that groundwater was falling 2 to 3 meters annually in central Punjab. We could not find these in any source as stated, and they have been replaced.