India is working on a plan to build a 10 gigawatts (GW) hydropower project in a remote eastern state, an Indian official said on Tuesday. The information was leaked following reports that China could construct dams on a section of the Brahmaputra river. Brahmaputra river, also known as the Yarlung Tsangbo in China, flows from Tibet into India’s Arunachal Pradesh state and down through Assam to Bangladesh. Indian authorities worry that Chinese projects could trigger flash floods or create water scarcity.
“The need of the hour is to have a big dam in Arunachal Pradesh to mitigate the adverse impact of the Chinese dam projects,” said T.S. Mehra, a senior official in India’s federal water ministry. “Our proposal is under consideration at the highest level in the government,” Mehra informed, adding the Indian plan would create a large water storage capacity to offset the impact of Chinese dams on flows. The diplomatic relations between India and China are not smooth, with troops locked in a border face-off in the western Himalayas for months.
“India is facing China’s terrestrial aggression in the Himalayas, maritime encroachments on its backyard and, as the latest news is a reminder, even water wars,” Brahma Chellaney, a specialist on India-China ties, said in a tweet. China reportedly is planning to build 60 GW hydropower capacity on a section of the Brahmaputra. China's dam construction has been mentioned as 'Historic opportunity' by the state owned Power Construction Corporation of China. China is to built dam around so-called “great bend”, where the Yarlung curves southward before entering India and where the river gains substantial volume of water, said Sayanangshu Modak, a researcher at the New-Delhi based Observer Research Foundation think-tank, he adds, it may cause heavy flood at times.
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