New Delhi, 15 September (H.S.): Six states on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Kishau Multipurpose Dam Project. The states are Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi. The proposed project will be constructed on the Tons, a tributary of the Yamuna. The agreement is expected to facilitate the advancement of the project and resolve pending coordination issues among the states.

The Chief Ministers of the six states signed the MoU during a meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The project is aimed at augmenting water storage capacity in the Yamuna basin, while strengthening power generation and flood-control measures. The project had remained pending for a long time due to a lack of coordination among the states over the sharing of water resources in the Yamuna basin.

The Home Minister said the government has declared the Kishau Multipurpose Project a national project. The Government of India will bear approximately 90 per cent of the project’s financial burden, while the remaining 10 per cent will be contributed by the participating states in accordance with the 1994 agreement.

Amit Shah said a 232.6-metre-high concrete gravity dam would be constructed on the Tons River, which flows along the border of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The reservoir will have a storage capacity of 1,562 million cubic metres. The project will provide irrigation to 97,000 hectares of land and generate 1,476 million units of clean hydropower. He said Delhi would be the biggest beneficiary of the project.

The Home Minister said that a serious lapse had occurred on the part of policymakers when the waters of the Yamuna were allocated. The environmental flow requirement of the Yamuna was not taken into account, and the entire available water was distributed among the states. As a result, no water was left for the river itself. He said the Kishau Multipurpose Project agreement would ensure that 25 per cent of the water would become available, which would prove highly beneficial for both Delhi and the Yamuna. It would also contribute to environmental conservation.

In the presence of Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah and Union Jal Shakti Minister C.R. Patil, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini signed the Kishau Multipurpose Project Agreement.

Amit Shah said that the tenth water-related dispute was set to be resolved during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure. He said that under Modi’s leadership, an initiative had been undertaken to resolve serious disputes that had persisted for the past 50 years.

He said the dispute over the Lakhwar Multipurpose Project was resolved first in August 2018. In the same month, the dispute over the Shahpur Kandi Dam Project was also settled. In 2019, the dispute over the Renukaji Multipurpose Dam Project in the Upper Yamuna Basin was resolved. In 2021, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh reached an agreement on the Ken-Betwa Link Project, benefiting the water-stressed Bundelkhand region. The revised Parbati-Kalisindh-Chambal River Linking Scheme was advanced in 2024. A plan to transfer water from Hathnikund to the Yamuna through an underground pipeline was approved in February 2024. The dispute over the rehabilitation of families displaced by the Narmada Project was resolved in July 2026. The water-sharing dispute between Bihar and Jharkhand in the Son basin was settled in August 2026, and finally, an agreement was reached on the Kishau Multipurpose Project today.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar