J&K’s Shahpur Kandi nears completion, full Ravi utilisation remains uncertain

About three decades after the foundational stone for the Shahpur Kandi barrage was laid, the project on the Ravi river, located on the Punjab-Jammu & Kashmir border, is on the verge of completion, Jammu and Kashmir's waters resources minister Javed Ahmed Rana said recently. 

The project has remained one of the longest pending steps towards India being able to fully utilise its share of the eastern rivers under the Indus Waters Treaty, under which, the waters of the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej are allocated to India for unrestricted use, while the western rivers, Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, are largely reserved for Pakistan.

In a recent conversation with media, Rana said that the long pending project will get completed by March 31 and said it will solve the problem of “excess water” from the Ravi river flowing into Pakistan. "Yes, excess water (from Ravi river) to Pakistan will be stopped. It has to be stopped," he said. This project is considered crucial for the drought-prone Kandi belt of Kathua and Samba districts, where irrigation has historically depended on erratic rainfall. 

“Kathua and Samba districts are drought-hit areas; and this project, which is our priority, is being constructed for the Kandi area," he told the media. 

The Shahpur Kandi barrage sits 11 km downstream of the Ranjit Sagar Dam famously known as the Thein Dam, a major multipurpose project and hydroelectric initiative constructed by the Punjab Irrigation Department on the Ravi River, and 8 km upstream of the Madhopur headworks, a barrage on the Ravi River in Madhopur, just 14 km from Pathankot city in Pathankot district Punjab.

Once fully operational, the Shahpur Kandi barrage will allow a controlled release of water for irrigation and help in optimising the functioning of the upstream hydropower station, which has so far been unable to run at full capacity because water had to be spilled downstream.

As per Union Jal Shakti ministry officials, initial filling of the reservoir has begun and safety testing is underway. Full impounding of water is expected in the coming months, which will enable irrigation of around 5,000 hectares in Punjab and more than 32,000 hectares in Jammu and Kashmir. The project will also regulate water already being released for irrigation in over 1.18 lakh hectares in Punjab.

For Jammu and Kashmir, the completion will finally make nearly 80 km of the Ravi canal and a 492.5-km distribution network that had been built years ago but remained dry because the barrage was incomplete.

Chief Engineer of the irrigation and flood control department of Jammu, Manoj Gupta, said the hydraulic system has already been tested. “The dam safety committee had raised some observations. We are not yet sure whether all of them have been fully addressed, but pounding has been carried out. We also conducted a trial run of the canal through the dam in September 2025,” he said.

Gupta also added that at least 150 cusecs of water was released and it worked very well. “The flow is entirely gravity-based, so no pumping is required. We had already completed the canal up to Basantpur, and Punjab has since finished its stretch. With the gradient in place, water now moves naturally, which makes the system far more efficient,” he added.

A project shaped by disputes and delays

The Shahpur Kandi project was started in 1979 when an agreement was signed between the then states of Punjab and J&K. Under this project, Punjab was to build both the Ranjit Sagar dam and the downstream barrage, with J&K receiving a share of the benefits.

Over the years, the progress of the project remained slow, mainly due to funding constraints, and also due to disagreements over the power component, and repeated inter-state disputes. In 2014, the work on the project was started once again following a fresh disagreement between Punjab and J&K. 

Later in 2018, a fresh agreement between the two states was signed and the government decided to give central assistance of ₹485.38 crore for the irrigation component. 

India is already utilising most of its share from the eastern rivers as per the Indus Waters Treaty through projects such as Bhakra, Pong and Pandoh, three key components of the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) infrastructure in Himachal Pradesh, crucial for power generation, irrigation, and flood control in Northern India.  

The Shahpur Kandi barrage is intended to plug one of the last major gaps by ensuring that water from the Ravi is stored, regulated and diverted for irrigation instead of flowing unutilised across the border.

The project took a political turn in 2019 after the Pulwama attack, when the Union government announced that water from the eastern rivers that had been “going waste” to Pakistan would be stopped. It gained renewed traction in the aftermath of the 2024 Pahalgam attack, after which Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced punitive measures against Islamabad, including suspension of the treaty.

Benefits and limitations

While the government has presented the project as a strategic intervention, Sant Kumar Sharma, an author known for his critical analysis of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan, said that its impact should not be overstated.

He pointed out that the barrage primarily enables irrigation and better operational control of existing infrastructure rather than creating large new storage. In his assessment, it will help recharge groundwater and bring irrigation to parts of the Kandi belt, but it represents only a fraction of the larger potential available to India on the Ravi.

Sharma said that two other projects, the proposed multipurpose dam on the Ujh, a major tributary of the Ravi, and a second Ravi–Beas link canal, are far more critical if India wants to maximise its allocated share. Those projects, he noted, require far higher investment and have not moved at the same pace.

“The other two projects would each cost around ₹10,000 crore. Only the smaller ₹500-crore Shahpur Kandi project was pushed and is now nearing completion. Even after completion, it will stop only about 20 percent of the water. Yet claims are made that all Ravi water has been stopped,” Sharma told Outlook. 

For the Kandi region, however, even this limited intervention could be transformative. The area has long been compared to semi-arid zones where agriculture is constrained by the depth of groundwater and the absence of canal irrigation. With assured water supply, officials expect cropping intensity to rise significantly and dependence on rain-fed farming to decline.

The full benefits of the project will only be realised once the two hydropower plants associated with the system are completed, Sharma noted. Through all three projects, Punjab will then be able to generate around 206 MW, while the improved water regulation will allow the 600 MW Ranjit Sagar station to operate at optimal capacity. Until then, the immediate gains will be in irrigation and in the controlled management of flows at Madhopur.

“The benefits of Shahpur Kandi will remain, but out of the total potential (about 2 million acre-feet), it will utilise only a small fraction, the remaining 80% of India’s share will still go to Pakistan,” he said.