Islamabad: There were angry protests from across the border in Pakistan after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a slew of multi-crore infrastructure projects including hydroelectric power plant in Jammu and Kashmir.
Islamabad has said that the project on a river flowing into the country will disrupt water supplies.
The 330-megawatt Kishanganga hydropower station, work on which started in 2009, is one of the projects that India has fast-tracked in the volatile state under PM Modi amid frosty ties between the nuclear-armed countries.
Pakistan has opposed some of these projects, saying they violate a World Bank-mediated treaty on the sharing of the Indus river and its tributaries upon which 80 percent of its irrigated agriculture depends.
“Pakistan is seriously concerned about the inauguration (of the Kishanganga plant),” its foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday. “Pakistan believes that the inauguration of the project without the resolution of the dispute is tantamount to violation of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).”
The Kishanganga project was delayed for several years as Pakistan dragged India to the International Court of Arbitration, which ruled in India’s favour in 2013.
India has said the hydropower projects underway in Jammu and Kashmir are “run-of-the-river” schemes that use the river’s flow and elevation to generate electricity rather than large reservoirs, and do not contravene the treaty.
PM Modi, who is on a day-long visit to the state, also flagged off the construction of the 14 kilometre-long Zojila tunnel to provide all-weather connectivity between Srinagar, Kargil and Leh cities.
The government said it would be the longest road tunnel in India and Asia’s longest bidirectional tunnel, to be constructed at a cost of $1 billion.
At the ceremony here, Modi said projects worth Rs 25,000 crore would either be initiated or inaugurated today in all three regions and it showed the commitment of the central and the state governments towards the speedy development of the state.
On developmental work carried in the country after forming his government, he said 18,000 villages which did not receive power since Independence have been given electrical connectivity within 1,000 days