Ignoring warning from Islamabad that power station on rivers of Kashmir will disrupt water supply in Pakistan, India has started six big hydropower projects on Chandrabhaga River. India has fast tracked those power projects with $15 billion in Jammu and Kashmir in recent months. The project was under review for past few years and last year it got approved when Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested that sharing the waterways could be conditional on Pakistan clamping down on anti-India militant it shelters.
The cumulative effect of these hydropower projects can give India the ability to store sufficient water to limit the supply to Pakistan at crucial moments. Senior officials said that the projects are “run-of-the-river” schemes that will use the river’s flow and ground elevation to generate electric power rather than large reservoirs.
The largest project is the Sawalkote plant, which is of 1,856 MW capacity. Now you can imagine how much time it will take to complete the project. The schemes will take many years to complete, but its approval could prove a flashpoint between the nuclear-armed neighbors at a time when relations are at a low level. Two senior officials of India’s Water Resources Ministry (IWR) and the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) said that six big hydro projects in Kashmir cleared the viability test as well as the advanced environment and forest expert approvals also in the last few months. Together these projects on the tributary of the Indus River, Chandrabhaga will increase the hydropower generation at least 3 times higher in Jammu and Kashmir from the current level of three thousand megawatts which will be the biggest jump in decades.
The officials of WRM said, “We have developed almost one-sixth of the hydropower capacity potential in Kashmir in the last fifty years”. “Then within three months, you see we cleared six to seven power projects and it definitely raises concern in Islamabad of Pakistan.”
One of the top ranking officials in the power ministry, Mr. Pradeep Kumar Pujari said, “It is not purely the Hydropower project, what people are looking at these projects. It is a strategic water management, border management project”. But Pakistan denies any involvement in the 28-year old armed insurgency in Kashmir region and has repeatedly urged India to hold decision for the future of the region.
But Spokesman and foreign ministry of Pakistan, Nafees Zakaria, said that he will confer with the Ministry of Water and Power on the proposed river projects in Kashmir, saying it is a technical matter. He said, “It seems that India has realized the value of this hydro project mechanism under the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) for resolving power generation problem”.
After all, Pakistan’s water supply is going to dwindle because not only for the river projects but also for the extreme climate change, non-mechanized farming techniques, and an exploding population. In 2011 a report by the US Senate Committee told New Delhi that they can use these river projects as a way to control Pakistan’s water supplies from the Indus River.
