Srinagar: India has fast-tracked hydropower projects worth $15 billion in Kashmir in recent months, ignoring warnings from Islamabad that power stations on rivers flowing into Pakistan will disrupt water supplies, reports quoting officials have said.
An international news gathering agency has reported that the swift approval of projects that had languished for years came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested last year that sharing the waterways could be conditional on Pakistan clamping down on anti-India militants that New Delhi says it shelters.
Pakistan has opposed some of these projects before, saying they violate a World Bank-mediated treaty on the sharing of the Indus river and its tributaries upon which 80 per cent of its irrigated agriculture depends.
The schemes, the largest of which is the 1,856 MW Sawalkote plant, will take years to complete, but their approval could prove a flashpoint between the nuclear-armed neighbours at a time when relations are at a low ebb.
