India fast-tracks Kashmir hydro projects; Pakistan's warnings ignored

Delhi: India has fast-tracked hydropower projects worth $15 billion in Kashmir in recent months, as per a media report.

India Today quoted three federal and state officials as saying that India went ahead with the projects ignoring warnings from Islamabad.

The schemes, the largest of which is the 1,856 MW Sawalkote plant, will take years to complete.

Pakistan has supposedly said that some of the projects violate a World Bank-mediated treaty on the sharing of the Indus river and its tributaries.

"I say the way you look at these projects, it is not purely a hydro project. Broaden it to a strategic water management, border management problem, and then you put in money," said Pradeep Kumar Pujari, the top ranking official in the power ministry, was quoted as saying by the media house.

On the other hand, Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman, Nafees Zakaria was quoted as saying by India Today that he would confer with the Ministry of Water and Power on the proposed Indian projects.

Further, two officials in India's Water Resources Ministry and the Central Electricity Authority said separately that six hydro projects in Indian Kashmir either cleared viability tests. 

The report said that as per India, the projects are "run-of-the-river" schemes that use the river's flow and elevation to generate electricity rather than large reservoirs.

India is of the view that they do not contravene the treaty.

On September 26 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as he chaired a review meeting of 56-year-old Indus Water Treaty, had said that 'blood and water cannot flow together'.

It was also decided in the meeting that decided that India would 'exploit to the maximum' the water of Pakistan-controlled rivers, including Jhelum, as per the water-sharing pact. 

Attended by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, the then foreign secretary S Jaishankar, the Water Resources Secretary, and senior PMO officials, the meeting had noted that the meeting of Indus Water Commission can "only take place in atmosphere free of terror".

"Prime Minister's Modi's message at the meeting was that 'rakt aur paani ek saath nahin beh sakta' (blood and water cannot flow together)," sources had said at that time, as per PTI.

Apart from deciding to exploit to the maximum the capacity of three of the rivers that are under Pakistan's control - Indus, Chenab and Jhelum - in the areas of hydro power, irrigation and storage, the meeting had also agreed to review the "unilateral suspension" of 1987 Tulbul navigation project.

The project was suspended in 2007.

The sources had asserted that the decision to maximise the water resources for irrigation would address the "pre-existing" sentiment of people of Jammu and Kashmir, who have complained in the past about the treaty not being fair to them.

Under the treaty, which was signed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan President Ayub Khan in September 1960, water of six rivers - Beas, Ravi, Sutlej, Indus, Chenab and Jhelum - were to be shared between the two countries.

Pakistan has been complaining about not receiving enough water and gone for international arbitration in a couple of cases. 

(With Agency inputs)