Six Yamuna states sign the ₹15,624-crore Kishau dam pact

Six northern states signed a memorandum on 15 September for the Kishau Multipurpose Project, a 422-megawatt dam that had been stuck for more than eight years on cost and water shares. Union Home Minister Amit Shah called it the tenth water dispute closed since Narendra Modi became prime minister. Jal Shakti Minister C. R. Patil sat with him. The signatories were Chief Ministers Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu (Himachal Pradesh), Pushkar Singh Dhami (Uttarakhand), Yogi Adityanath (Uttar Pradesh), Nayab Singh Saini (Haryana), Rekha Gupta (Delhi) and Bhajan Lal Sharma (Rajasthan).

The dam is a 232.6-metre concrete gravity structure on the Tons, a Yamuna tributary, along the Uttarakhand-Himachal border. Storage is put at 1,562 million cubic metres. The project is meant to irrigate about 97,000 hectares and generate 1,476 million units of hydropower. The price tag is ₹15,624 crore. Shah said the Centre will carry about 90 per cent of the cost. The states will split the remaining 10 per cent on the 1994 basin formula. The project is classified as a national project, which is what makes that 90 per cent possible.

Water shares named in the briefings are 836 cusecs for Haryana, 543.2 for Uttar Pradesh, 163.52 for Rajasthan and 105.28 for Delhi. Shah said 25 per cent of the new water would go to revive the Yamuna and that Delhi would be the largest beneficiary. Himachal, the upstream host, had refused to pay for a water component that mainly serves the plains. At a 16 June meeting Shah chaired, the Centre agreed that the estimated ₹2,000 crore power component on the Himachal side would be paid by the water beneficiaries: Delhi, Rajasthan and Haryana. Shah also told Uttarakhand that Delhi would help with the financial load that falls on it.

The file now goes to the Union Cabinet for investment clearance. An MoU is not a notice to proceed with concrete. Land, forest and environment clearances, and the actual tender, still sit ahead. Eight years of deadlock were about who pays, not about hydrology. That argument is now written down. Construction time will test whether the 90-10 split survives the first cost overrun.

For Delhi the promise is more Yamuna water in a city that already treats the river as a drain. For Himachal and Uttarakhand the promise is that they will not be billed as if they were the users. For the Centre the promise is a completed dam that can be counted among closed disputes. The Tons does not care which of those promises is the real one. The next public number that matters is the Cabinet sanction and the year work starts on the riverbed.