Sediment-flushing from 3 Indus dams completed

SRINAGAR: The poplar-ringed main office complex for Kashmir's Kishanganga power station in Kralpora, three hours north of Srinagar, has been the venue for daily brainstorming sessions involving a visiting federal team of experts and local engineers, who are formulating a plan for the project's upkeep.

- Zia Haq

India has completed flushing sediments out of three other dams in Kashmir for the first time since they began operation decades ago and opened bids for wide-ranging upkeep activities in others, including desilting and repair, to boost power output, three officials said, requesting anonymity.

The overhaul and maintenance of dams operated by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) Ltd, the country's largest state-backed hydropower firm, is part of work undertaken outside the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, which India suspended following a deadly terrorist attack in Jammu & Kashmir's Pahalgam on April 22.

Prior to keeping the watersharing pact in abeyance, India had been pressing Pakistan to renegotiate the treaty, citing natural changes in the Indus river basin itself, which, according to India, had diminished water availability amid a rising population.

The flushing activities to clear riverine deposits, which were earlier subject to conditions laid down in the treaty, could be carried out usually in August and only once annually.