J&K's Hydro Energy Leap

At first glance, the Government's plan to nearly triple its installed hydropower capacity-from 3,540.15 MW today to 10,969.65 MW by December 2035-reads like the sort of number that belongs on a promotional banner rather than a policy document. Yet a closer look at the roadmap unveiled by the Chief Secretary's review meeting suggests this is no idle aspiration. It is a phased, project-wise, milestone-driven plan, and much of the heavy lifting has already begun. Consider the numbers on the ground. The 1,000 MW Pakal Dul project has crossed 85 per cent physical progress; the 624 MW Kiru project stands at nearly 89 per cent; even the more recent 540 MW Kwar and 850 MW Ratle projects have crossed a third of their construction targets, with their most technically demanding components - powerhouse caverns, dam concreting, tunnel excavation - substantially complete. By the end of 2026, over 1,600 MW should flow into the grid from Pakal Dul, Kiru and the smaller Karnah project. Kwar and Ratle follow in 2028, with a further 500 MW of Central Sector additions in 2029, and the final push - Kirthai-I and II and the giant 1,856 MW Sawalkote scheme - through to 2035. This is a construction schedule with dates, percentages and named project heads accountable for delivery.

That such scale is even conceivable owes much to a quieter, structural shift: the Indus Waters Treaty is presently in abeyance. For decades, treaty-related design constraints on the western rivers - Chenab, Jhelum and Ravi - slowed or complicated hydropower planning in the Union Territory. With that constraint removed for now, the tap on J&K's identified potential of 14,635 MW - of which only about a quarter has been harnessed so far - has effectively been opened wider than at any point in independent India's history. The Chenab basin alone, holding over three-quarters of the UT's hydro potential, is where the bulk of new capacity, from Kiru to Sawalkote, is rightly being concentrated.

It is also worth noting what this 10,969.65 MW figure leaves out. It excludes rooftop and utility-scale solar, which the UT is separately pushing under household schemes. It excludes the small hydroelectric projects that UT planners will inevitably add to the pipeline between now and 2035. And it does not yet account for the power that could be freed up simply by plugging the AT&C losses. In other words, the headline target is, if anything, a conservative floor rather than an ambitious ceiling.

However, a large share of this upcoming capacity - Pakal Dul, Kiru, Kwar, Ratle, Dulhasti-II, and Uri-I Stage-II - belongs to the Central Sector, run by NHPC and its partners. Under the existing royalty and power-sharing arrangements, J&K's own free share of this generation remains modest. Tripling installed capacity on paper does not translate into tripling the electricity actually available to a household in Jammu and Kashmir. Given the UT's rising annual consumption curve, even a fully realised 2035 roadmap may still leave a supply gap. Practically, J&K's chronic power shortages have never been purely a generation problem. They are, overwhelmingly, a distribution problem. Aggregate Technical losses in the Union Territory have sat stubbornly among the highest in the country for decades, surviving one reform push after another. Every new project inaugurated in the past has briefly lifted public mood - extra hours of supply, fewer load-shedding schedules - only for the gains to evaporate within months as theft, faulty metering, billing inefficiencies and transmission leakage reasserted themselves.

The Government deserves credit for the seriousness of its generation roadmap and the discipline with which the Chief Secretary is monitoring construction milestones. Work is genuinely in top gear, and the targeted capacity will very likely be achieved close to schedule. But unless accountability for AT&C losses is enforced with the same rigour now reserved for dam concreting percentages and tunnel excavation rates, J&K risks a familiar and frustrating outcome: gigawatts flowing down its rivers, and the lights still flickering in its homes. Generation is only half the journey to true energy self-reliance; distribution discipline is the other, and it can no longer be treated as an afterthought.