330-MW Kishanganga project set to power up northern Kashmir.

It was a Friday afternoon in the month of Ramadan. The dam site of the 330-MW Kishanganga hydropower project looked deserted, as most of the local workers had left for afternoon prayers.

Two local Gurezi contractors of Reliance Jio mobile services came rushing to the hydel project contractor, Hindustan Construction Company (HCC). They wanted last-minute help to launch 4G services in Gurez.

RJio has brought optical fibre cable to this last post of the country in northern Kashmir bordering Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, through the 24-km head-tunnel from the dam on the Kishanganga river to Bandipora, some 84 km away by road, through one of the world’s coldest regions in the Razdan Pass.

Located in the high Himalayas, Gurez, the home of the Dard tribe whose culture is different from the average Kashmiri’s except for religion, remains buried under fields of snow and is detached from the world during the five winter months.

Showpiece project

Leave alone data connectivity, even basic tele-connectivity is weak here. The issue will now be resolved courtesy a showpiece hydel project.

Built at an astronomical cost of Rs. 5,750 crore or Rs. 17 crore a MW, Kishanganga Hydro Electric Power project (KHEP) is a technological marvel. It diverts a portion of water from the Kishanganga, a tributary of the Jhelum, in Gurez, before the river enters Pakistan a few kilometres downstream.

KHEP needs 19 cubic metre per second (cumec) to run each of the three turbines. As on May 18, when this correspondent visited, two turbines were running, requiring 38 cumec water, against an inflow of 150 cumec. The inflow will increase substantially in July when more snow will melt.

The diverted water is used to generate hydropower at Bandipora by NHPC (Kishanganga hydel), and then released back into the Jhelum (through a network of rivers and water bodies including the famous Wulur Lake), just ahead of its confluence with the Kishanganga in Pakistan.

What is interesting, though, is that before the diverted water is released, it increases lean-season water availability at NHPC’s Uri I (480MW) and Uri II (240MW) hydropower projects on the Jhelum.

Since no water is drawn, the proposed China-built 969-MW Neelum-Jhelum hydropower in PoK should remain affected. The Neelum-Jhelum project, which was conceived almost at the same time as Kishanganga, will also divert water from the Nelum to the Jhelum.

This complex planning has allowed India to use the Kishanganga water, bypassing the non-consumptive clauses (on Pakistan-bound rivers) in the water treaty, and prevail over Pakistan’s objections in the international court in December 2013. But it costs time and money. Conceived in 2007, the project has seen a 60 per cent cost escalation. Costs have also been high as the project has to deal with exceptional weather conditions.

The dam is located in a glacial zone and the water freezes in the winter. To deal with it, the dam gates have ice cutters. Also, a part of the electricity generated will be used to keep the gates warm in the winter.

HBL