India Cuts Water Supply to Pakistan from Baglihar Dam on Chenab River: A Critical Examination Beyond Headlines

How long can India restrict water flow to Pakistan from Baglihar Dam, at what cost to power generation, and what lies beyond symbolic actions?

The Baglihar Hydroelectric Power Project built on the Chenab river. (ANI Photo)

A Critical Examination Beyond Headlines

— By Karan Bir Singh Sidhu, Retd. IAS

The PTI report, widely circulated across Indian mainstream media on 4 May 2025, declared that “India Cuts Water Supply to Pakistan from Jammu’s Baglihar Dam.” The move was presented as a retaliatory step following the Pahalgam terror attack and in the context of India's suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty.

What most news coverage failed to critically examine, however, is the technical feasibility and sustainability of such a decision—particularly because the Baglihar Dam, situated on the Chenab River in Ramban district of Jammu and Kashmir, is not a storage-based dam but a run-of-the-river hydroelectric project.

This article attempts to bridge that gap by offering a grounded assessment of the operational realities, geopolitical calculations, and long-term strategic imperatives that are conspicuously absent from media narratives.

Understanding Baglihar: A run-of-the-river project on the Chenab

The Chenab River, one of the western rivers covered under the Indus Waters Treaty, flows westward from Himachal Pradesh through Jammu and Kashmir into Pakistan. The Baglihar Dam, located near Chanderkote village in Ramban district, harnesses its flow to generate hydroelectric power.

Critically, the dam is a run-of-the-river (RoR) facility, which means:

• It has minimal storage capacity.

• It depends on natural river inflow to operate its turbines.

• Water used for electricity generation must be released downstream.

Storage specifications:

• Total capacity: 395.95 million cubic metres (0.321 MAF)

• Active storage: 32.56 million cubic metres (0.026 MAF)

• Pondage (for daily flow regulation): 37.5 million cubic metres (0.030 MAF)

These figures are modest and highlight the technical constraints under which Baglihar operates.

Power generation vs. water restriction: An inherent contradiction

To produce electricity, water must be allowed to flow through the turbines and exit into the river’s downstream course — which means Pakistan continues to receive water.

If the outflow is completely blocked, this leads to:

• Rapid filling of the limited reservoir (within 7–10 days),

• Shutdown of turbine operations due to backpressure and overspill risk,

• Complete halt in power generation — a self-defeating consequence.

Therefore, any claim of cutting off water to Pakistan must be qualified. Unless India is willing to forgo its own electricity generation, a total water restriction is not technically possible at Baglihar.

Duration of storage and operational limits

India’s ability to hold back water is strictly time-bound:

• Using full reservoir: about 10 days of full-capacity generation.

• Active storage alone: around 20 hours of turbine operation.

• Pondage only: approximately 23 hours.

Thus, this measure is not sustainable beyond a few days without either:

• Halting electricity production,

• Wasting valuable inflow, or

• Causing possible ecological and mechanical stress.

No other utilisation path for the water

Baglihar was built exclusively for hydroelectricity — not irrigation, urban use, or inter-basin transfers. There is:

• No alternate outlet,

• No downstream catchment within Indian territory,

• And no infrastructure to reroute the Chenab elsewhere from this point.

That leaves India with a binary choice: either use the water to generate power and release it, or store it briefly and stop production.

A missed opportunity by the media

It is disappointing that mainstream journalism has, yet again, settled for dramatic headlines rather than informed analysis. While the political optics of “India cuts off Pakistan’s water” have strong populist appeal, no one has asked the deeper, essential questions:

• Can this actually be done?

• For how long?

• At what cost to India’s own energy needs?

This gap in reporting leaves the public uninformed about the real stakes — and the constraints imposed by both engineering design and treaty obligations.

Kishanganga on Jhelum: Limited Leverage

If and when India imposes a similar water restriction at the Kishanganga Dam on the Jhelum River, the impact will again be largely symbolic. The project’s run-of-the-river design and minimal active storage — just 0.0061 MAF — permit water to be held back for only 1–2 days before inflows must resume. Moreover, a 2013 international arbitration ruling— which India may now disregard— requires India to maintain a minimum downstream environmental flow of 9 cubic metres per second, severely limiting any prolonged cutoff. While such a move may send a strong political message and momentarily disrupt flows to Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s Neelum-Jhelum basin, it cannot inflict lasting hydrological or strategic pressure. As with Baglihar, treaty-bound infrastructure constraints mean these actions are tactical signals, not instruments of sustained coercion.

Conclusion: A tactical move, not a strategic shift

India’s decision to restrict water flow from the Baglihar Dam on the Chenab River is a strong tactical signal, not a sustained reconfiguration of river control. The dam’s run-of-the-river design limits how long India can withhold water before undermining its own power production.

While the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty is welcome — and long overdue — this episode also exposes the inherent limitations of infrastructure built within the treaty’s restrictive framework. The projects were designed for compliance, not coercion. As a result, indefinitely holding back water is neither technically viable nor strategically productive, particularly given the loss of electricity generation it would entail.

This makes the current action largely symbolic. And while symbolism has its place, an informed nation must recognise that the scope and duration of such a measure are inherently constrained — and could even prove self-defeating in energy terms.

Thus, while short-term tactical moves like this serve to express resolve, the long-term strategy must now focus on structural and irreversible options. Chief among them is the Maru-Tunnel (Chenab-Ravi diversion tunnel), about 12-kilometre-long proposed diversion that would channel Chenab waters into the Ravi-Beas basin. Only by implementing such permanent hydrological solutions can India exert meaningful pressure on Pakistan and redefine the terms of this decades-old water relationship, that has worked to India’s detriment with J&K and Punjab bearing the brunt.