Politicians had promised the people the sky, bagging their votes, but they had not been able to construct any major water reservoir after Tarbala and Mangla Dams. Over the past three decades, neighbouring countries such as India and China had built several dams to fulfil their irrigation and power needs.
India has so far completed at least 33 dams for power generation over Chenab and Jhelum rivers and six more were under construction and 10 more were in the planning stages. Five more power plants are being built on River Jhelum and another on River Chenab, while it is likely that 10 more dams will be built in future.
Similarly, China has built scores of dams during last five last years. But, today we are facing electricity and water shortages because no major hydropower project was constructed for supplying cheap energy to the masses. The fate of Diamer-Bhasha dam and Dasu dam projects is still unclear because of unavailability of funds.
On Tuesday, Gul Muhammad Jhakrani of the PPP raised the issue of Kalabagh dam in an emotional manner on the floor of the House. He also criticised PML-N leaders Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif for what he termed was their duplicity on this issue. While responding to Jhakrani's assertions, Khwaja Saad Rafique of PML-N said that building Kalabagh dam was in the national interest, but there was a need to develop consensus among all provinces on this issue.
The Lahore High Court's controversial verdict on the Kalabagh Dam was unlikely to facilitate the project's construction, but it has given an issue to political parties for the upcoming elections. The Kalabagh dam project had been controversial since its inception. But the major issue is that the matter has been largely politicised: the consensus resolutions of three assemblies against it are the biggest hurdle in its way.
If built, the Kalabagh dam will help irrigate at least four million acres of land. Water released for irrigation will be passed through a power house, generating 3,600 megawatts of cheap power as a by-product. During the Musharraf in 2004, the then government had announced that the dam would be built in the larger national interest, but that commitment remained unfulfilled. The PPP government is pursuing a policy of building small dams, instead of constructing larger dams.