ISLAMABAD, Sept 26: The federal government agreed on Thursday to pay Azad Kashmir royalty for power generation from the Mangla Dam on the pattern of the NWFP.
A formal announcement to this effect would be made by President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Sept 30 when he is scheduled to inaugurate the Rs55 billion project to raise the height of the Mangla Dam, reliable sources told Dawn on Thursday.
The consensus was reached at a meeting, presided over by the president, here on Thursday. The meeting was attended by AJK President Maj-Gen Sardar Mohammad Anwar Khan, Prime Minister Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan, Federal Minister for Information and Kashmir Affairs Nisar Memon, Punjab Governor Lt-Gen Khalid Maqbool, the secretaries of Kashmir affairs and water and power and the Wapda chairman.
According to the sources, it was agreed that a formal agreement would be signed between the two governments once President Musharraf made an announcement because it would require a number of follow-up consultations relating to legal and constitutional matters.
The amount of royalty would be worked out under the A. G. N. Qazi formula which is currently in vogue for the payment of royalty to the NWFP on power generation from the Tarbela Dam.
The authorities also decided that the amount would be finalized after the federal National Finance Commission (NFC) secretariat had re-worked out royalty with the NWFP under the 6th NFC Award.
It could not, however, be ascertained whether the royalty would be paid to Azad Kashmir with retrospective effect from 1967 when the dam was first constructed or with effect from the day when raising the dam would be completed.
The federal and AJK governments also finalized a compensation package to be paid to over 40,000 people, who would be displaced due to raising Mangla dam height by 30 feet. The old and new affected people would be paid Rs200,000 and Rs300,000 per head, respectively. The new affected persons would also be provided with alternate plots and housing facilities, the sources said.
The AJK government and Wapda had agreed to withdraw all claims and counter-claims of outstanding electricity charges against each other, they added.
However, a number of participants of the meeting, contacted by Dawn, refused to comment on the subject, saying that the president would announce the decision on the occasion of project inauguration.
Mangla Dam raising would result in an additional water storage capacity of around three million acre feet (MAF) and 18 per cent or 1250MW increase in energy output from the existing power plant.
About 40,000 people in 7,000 houses would have to be resettled. Out of Rs55 billion project cost, about Rs20 billion is estimated to incur on resettlement of displaced persons.
The project would be completed in four years. The dam, built as part of 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, was commissioned in 1967. Its current crest elevation is 1,234 feet and 11,000 feet long and rises to a maximum height of 380 feet above the river bed that would now go upto 410 feet. The total live storage capacity would thus rise to 8.4MAF from the existing level of 5.3MAF.