Jammu & Kashmir revives 120-year-old Mohra hydel project amid push to ramp up power capacity

The Jammu and Kashmir government has moved to revive the historic Mohra Power Project, a 120-year-old hydroelectric facility lying defunct since the 1990s, the Times of India reported, as it accelerates work on power generation in the backdrop of the Indus Water Treaty being put in abeyance after the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who also holds the power portfolio, told the J&K Assembly on Wednesday that the Board of Directors of the J&K State Power Development Corporation has initiated steps for the project’s revival.

At a meeting on February 9, the board approved floating a limited tender enquiry to appoint a transaction adviser from firms empanelled with the Department of Economic Affairs. The adviser will help steer the renovation, modernisation, upgrade, operation and maintenance of the 10.5 MW plant.


Located on the banks of the Jhelum River in Boniyar in the Uri sector of north Kashmir’s Baramulla district, the Mohra Power Project was commissioned in 1905 and is among India’s oldest hydroelectric stations.

Built as a run-of-the-river project, it initially had a capacity of around 5 MW. The plant suffered extensive damage during floods in September 1992, which affected its tailrace system. Generation fell to about 3 MW before the facility eventually shut down, said former engineer Iftikhar A Drabu, who has worked on major hydropower projects in the region, including Kishanganga and Dulhasti.

The revival plan comes days after Abdullah told the Assembly on March 27 that construction of ongoing hydel projects across J&K was being accelerated “in the backdrop of the Indus Water Treaty being kept in abeyance”. The broader strategy appears aimed at ramping up the region’s generation capacity from the current 3,540 MW to around 11,000 MW by 2035.

“The Mohra hydroelectric plant was constructed after the major floods of 1903 to support dredging operations in the Jhelum. Its turbines were brought from Czechoslovakia,” Drabu said.

One of the project’s most distinctive features is its wooden water channel, stretching over 10 km along the mountains. Water was carried from Rampur to Mohra through this wooden flume to power the turbines, making it a low-impact engineering innovation for its time, he added.

“About nine years ago, there was a proposal to develop it as a heritage structure, but it did not move forward,” said Hashmat A Qazi, former chief engineer with the Power Development Department.

While the proposed capacity of around 10.5 MW is modest and unlikely to significantly dent the region’s power deficit, Qazi said the project’s revival holds historical and symbolic value, underscoring its importance as a piece of Kashmir’s engineering heritage.