indus water treaty Postponed after the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025, it has announced to revive the historic Mohra Power Project – a 120-year-old hydroelectric facility that has been lying defunct since the 1990s.cm Omar AbdullahThe board of directors of Jammu and Kashmir State Power Development Corporation has started the process for revival of the project, the man who also holds the charge of the power department told the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly on Wednesday. At a meeting held on February 9, the board approved launching a limited tender inquiry involving a transaction consultant from firms listed with the Department of Economic Affairs for the renovation, modernisation, upgrading, operation and maintenance of the 10.5MW plant.Located on the banks of the Jhelum River at Boniyar in the Uri sector of Baramulla district of north Kashmir, the Mohra Power Project was started in 1905 and is one of the oldest hydroelectric power stations in India.It was built as a run-of-the-river project and initially had a capacity of about 5 MW. The project was damaged by floods in September 1992, after which its tailrace system was affected, and power output fell to about 3 MW before operations were shut down, said former engineer Iftikhar A Drabu, who has worked on major hydropower projects in Jammu and Kashmir for more than three decades, including Kishanganga and Dulhasti.The announcement regarding the Mohra project came just days after CM Omar told the Assembly on March 27 that the pace of construction of ongoing hydropower projects across Jammu and Kashmir was being accelerated “in the backdrop of keeping the Indus Water Treaty on hold”. This appears to be part of a plan to increase generation from the current 3540 MW to about 11000 MW by 2035.“The Mohra hydroelectric power plant was constructed to support dredging operations in the Jhelum after the great flood of 1903. Its turbines were brought from Czechoslovakia,” Drabu said.The most striking feature of the project is its wooden water channel, which extends for more than 10 km along the mountains. Water was transported from Rampur to Mohra via wooden flumes to drive the turbines, Drabu said, making it a low-impact engineering feat for its time.“About nine years ago, there was a proposal to develop it as a heritage structure, but it did not go ahead,” said Hashmat A Qazi, former chief engineer of the power development department. Although its proposed capacity of about 10.5MW is modest and unlikely to significantly reduce the region’s electricity shortage, Qazi said the revival holds historical and symbolic significance, and the project has great heritage value.