J&K govt announces revival of 120-yr-old power project | India News
Indus Water Treaty On hold after the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025, it has announced the revival of the historic Mohra Power Project – a 120-year-old hydroelectric facility that has remained defunct since the 1990s.CM Omar Abdullahwho also holds charge of the power department, told the J&K Assembly on Wednesday that the board of directors of the J&K State Power Development Corporation has initiated the process for revival of the project. In a meeting held on February 9, the board approved a limited tender inquiry to engage a transaction advisor of companies listed with the Department of Economic Affairs for renovation, modernisation, upgrade, operation and maintenance of the 10.5 MW plant.Located on the banks of the river Jhelum at Bonyar in the Uri sector of North Kashmir’s Baramulla district, the Mohra Power Project was commissioned in 1905 and is one of the oldest hydroelectric power stations in India.It was built as a run-of-the-river project and initially had a capacity of about 5 MW. The project was hit by floods in September 1992, after which its tailrace system was affected, and power generation dropped to about 3 MW before work was stopped, said former engineer Iftikhar A Drabu, who has worked on major hydropower projects in Jammu and Kashmir, including Kishanganga and Dulhasti, for more than three decades.The announcement on the Mohra project came as CM Omar told the Assembly on March 27 that the pace of construction of ongoing hydropower projects across J&K was accelerating “against the backdrop of the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty”. This seems to be part of the plan to increase the generation from the present 3540 MW to about 11000 MW by 2035.“The Mohra hydroelectric station was built to support dredging operations in the Jhelum after the great flood of 1903. Its turbines were brought from Czechoslovakia,” said Drabu.The most interesting feature of the project is its wooden water channel, stretching more than 10 km along the hill. Water was carried from Rampur to Mohra through wooden flumes to drive the turbines, making it a low-impact engineering feat for its time, Drabu said.“About nine years ago, there was a proposal to make it a traditional structure, but it did not go ahead,” said Hasmat A Kazi, former chief engineer of the power development department. Although its proposed capacity of around 10.5 MW is unlikely to significantly ease the region’s power shortage, Qazi said the revival carries historical and symbolic significance and the project has great heritage value.
