EXCLUSIVE: With Indus Waters Treaty on hold, Centre panel to weigh clearance for Sawalkote dam on Chenab this week

On July 10, less than three months after suspension of the IWT, the Environment Ministry’s Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) – its clearance is required in parallel with EAC appraisal if forest land is to be diverted – granted an exemption from these studies at the request of the Ministries of Power and Home Affairs.

The Secretary, Ministry of Power, in a June 11 letter, said that in the “current geopolitical scenario” conducting a detailed CIA and CCS for these river basins at this stage may have implications on the already initiated clearances and approval processes and subsequent implementation/execution of important upcoming hydel projects in J&K.

The Secretary, MHA, in a June 13 letter, said “the project is of strategic significance and that the swift dam construction is essential for leveraging Chenab River’s potential”.

While granting the exemption, the FAC had noted that though CIA and CCS studies are a prerequisite for considering forest clearances in a river basin, the Sawalkote project was initiated in 1984, and hence the guidelines only have “prospective applicability”. It said that since the guidelines on these studies were brought in 2013, they may not be retrospectively applied. The final forest clearance, though, is subject to environmental clearance.

First initiated in 1984, the project has faced delays due to Centre-state tussles. Under the IWT, the west-flowing Chenab, Indus and Jhelum rivers are under the control of Pakistan. Officials formerly associated with the Permanent Indus Commission said Pakistan had sought information on the project in the past. But India never shared any information because under the IWT, each is mandated to notify the other only six months before construction begins.

With the IWT in abeyance following the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack, the government has pushed Sawalkote project as a strategic priority, already floating multiple tenders for its various components.

The project will divert 846 hectares of forest in Udhampur, Mahore, Batote and Ramban. This will include cutting of 2,22,081 trees, with the maximum – 1,26,462 – to be felled in Ramban district. The project’s installed capacity will be 1,406 MW in Stage-I and 450 MW in Stage-II.

The EAC recommended environmental clearance for Sawalkote HEP in January 2017. However, the final environmental clearance order was not issued since forest clearance had not been granted.

Under the Environment Ministry’s own norms, projects that fail to secure in-principle forest clearance within 18 months and rely on environmental data more than three years old are expected to update their baseline studies. For Sawalkote, the mandatory public hearing was last held in January 2016, which meant its original data is outdated.

The NHPC, however, has said that it has since collected fresh primary data across three seasons – monsoon (July 2022), winter (January 2023) and pre-monsoon (May 2023) – to meet this requirement.

Although it is described as a “run-of-river” scheme, Sawalkote entails construction of a 192.5-metre-high concrete gravity dam with a reservoir capacity of 530 million cubic metres spread over 1,159 hectares. This has been a contentious issue in the past.

Hydrology experts and environmentalists from J&K and other parts of the country had written to the J&K State Pollution Control Board in January 2016, stating that it was “misleading” to term the project as “run-of-river” in its environmental impact assessment study.

They had also pointed out that there is a “bumper-to-bumper” hydropower situation on Chenab with three projects already in operation – the 390-MW Dulhast project at Kishtwar, the 890-MW Baglihar at Ramban, and the 690-MW Salal project at Reasi.

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