After construction began in 1999, Pakistan objected that the design parameters of the Baglihar project violated the Indus Water Treaty of 1960. The treaty provides for India to make use of the three western rivers of the Indus River system, including Chenab River, in constrained ways.[5]India can only establish run-of-the-river power projects with limited reservoir capacity and limited control over flows needed for feasible power generation. Availing this provision, India planned for several run-of-the-river projects, with Pakistan objecting to them. In the case of the Baglihar and Kishanganga Hydroelectric Plants, Pakistan claimed that some design parameters were too lax. It claimed that they were not needed for feasible power generation but for gaining an excessive ability to accelerate, decelerate or block the flow of the water, thus giving India a strategic leverage in times of political tension or war.
SRINAGAR, May 6 (Reuters) – India has advanced the start date of four under-construction hydropower projects in the Kashmir region by months after suspending a water-sharing treaty with Pakistan that had slowed progress, according to an industry source and a government document.
The updated schedule for the projects, whose construction Pakistan generally opposes, opens new tab because it fears it would lead to less water downstream, is another sign of how India is trying to take advantage of its unilateral suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 following a deadly attack in Kashmir last month.
India has said two of the “terrorists” who killed 26 men at a popular tourist site in Kashmir on April 22 came from Pakistan, and has taken a series of diplomatic and economic steps against Islamabad as ties between the nuclear-armed neighbours nosedive.
Islamabad has denied any role in the attack, threatened legal action over the suspension, and said any “attempt to stop or divert the flow of water belonging to Pakistan … will be considered as an act of war”. Pakistan depends on the Indus system for 80% of its farms and most of its hydroelectric output.
The armies have exchanged small arms fire across the border every night for nearly two weeks and Pakistan says India is on the verge of a military assault.
New Delhi — Pakistani authorities accused India on Thursday of a “serious provocation” as the nuclear-armed neighbors’ forces clashed in the disputed Kashmir region weeks after a terror attack on Indian tourists sparked a sudden cross-border crisis. India’s Ministry of Defense, in a statement released later Thursday, said its drone strike was a response to Pakistani forces firing drones and missiles at Indian military installations overnight.
Pakistani officials said India launched an attack with at least 13 drones early Thursday morning, all but one of which they said were shot down by the country’s own military. A military spokesman said one civilian was killed and several troops wounded in the strikes.
India said it was responding to Pakistani attacks overnight that killed 16 people, including three women and five children.
“India has undertaken yet another blatant military act of aggression against Pakistan by sending Harop drones at multiple locations,” Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the Pakistani Army spokesman, said at a press briefing on Thursday, adding that the Indian attack, “continues, and the armed forces are on high degree of alert and neutralizing them as we speak.”
Above, glacier experts discuss how glacial waters will become a flashpoint among nations as climate warms and ice melts.