Six Yamuna states sign the Kishau dam pact after a 32-year split over cost

Six governments that share the Yamuna signed a construction agreement for the Kishau Multipurpose Project in New Delhi on 15 September. The signatories were Chief Ministers Pushkar Singh Dhami of Uttarakhand, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu of Himachal Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath of Uttar Pradesh, Nayab Singh Saini of Haryana, Bhajan Lal Sharma of Rajasthan and Rekha Gupta of Delhi. Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Jal Shakti Minister C. R. Patil sat with them.

The dam has been on paper since the 1940s and in dispute since a 1994 cost-sharing formula. Shah called Tuesday the tenth water quarrel the present central government has closed. The new bargain is simple on the page. The Union will pay about 90 percent of the water component. The six partners split the rest on the 1994 key. Himachal will not carry the water-component bill that earlier drafts had parked on Shimla. Delhi, Rajasthan and Haryana will jointly cover an estimated ₹2,000 crore for the power component on the Himachal side.

What the structure is supposed to do

Engineers want a 232.6-metre concrete gravity dam on the Tons, the Yamuna tributary that marks the Uttarakhand-Himachal line. Storage is put at 1,562 million cubic metres. Irrigation is put at 97,000 hectares. Power is put at 422 megawatts, or 1,476 million units a year. Officials say Delhi will take the largest drinking-water benefit and that the reservoir is meant to put more water into a thinner Yamuna in the lean months.

The price tag circulating with the agreement is ₹15,624 crore. The project now carries a national-project tag, which is how the 90 percent central share was justified. A June meeting chaired by Shah had already sketched this split. Tuesday turned the sketch into signatures.

Sukhu told reporters that the previous Himachal government had accepted an ₹800 crore state share that his cabinet refused. He called the new paper a win for a hill state with a small budget. Dhami called it a step toward water and power security for the upper basin. Shah said Uttarakhand’s remaining cash gap would be looked at under central schemes.

Why a signature is not yet a dam

Kishau still needs detailed designs, environmental and forest clearances, land acquisition in two hill states, and a construction schedule that survives monsoon geology on the Tons. Those steps have killed or delayed other Himalayan storage projects. The 32-year fight was about who pays. The next fight will be about who moves and whose forest is cut.

For Delhi the interest is downstream and dry-season. For Himachal and Uttarakhand it is compensation, power share and the risk of a large concrete wall on a seismic river. For Haryana and Rajasthan it is irrigation water that does not arrive if the dam stalls again. The agreement names the shares. It does not pour concrete. The first public test is whether the central 90 percent shows up in a budget line and whether the three states that promised ₹2,000 crore for the power side write the cheques.