India is All Set to Harness Hydropower With Eye on the China-Pakistan Axis
News 18Sometime around the end of last month, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs sanctioned 4526 crore rupees to construct the 540 MW Kwar hydropower project in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kishtwar district by Chenab Valley Power Projects Pvt. The backdrop to these developments is the Indus Water Treaty signed between India and Pakistan in 1960 to share the waters of six Indus basin rivers that flow from India to Pakistan. As per the treaty, India has complete rights over three eastern rivers— Sutlej, Beas, and Ravi— whereas Pakistan has complete rights over three western rivers— Sindhu, Chenab, and Jhelum. Though Pakistan has control over the Western rivers, India can still build the ROR projects on them— and thus, since the brutal Uri attack in 2016, the central government has sanctioned various projects on both the eastern and western rivers.