The Tulbul Navigation project – that seeks to rejuvenate the Jhelum-fed Wular lake in Bandipora district – was kicked off in 1987 but stalled in 2007 amid objections from Pakistan.
A public spat broke out between Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his predecessor Mehbooba Mufti on social media on Friday over calls for revival of the Tulbul Navigation project after the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty.
Ms Mufti accused Mr Abdullah of adopting “provocative” measures amid ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan. Mr Abdullah, however, alleged that the former Chief Minister was trying to score “cheap publicity points” and “please some people” in Pakistan by opposing the idea.
The Tulbul Navigation project – that seeks to rejuvenate the Jhelum-fed Wular lake in Bandipora district – was launched in 1987 but paused in 2007 amid objections from Pakistan that it violated the Indus Waters Treaty. With India suspending the Treaty on April 23, a day after the Pahalgam terror attack, Mr Abdullah on Thursday called for resumption of work in the project on Wular Lake.
In a post on X, the Chief Minister said that since the water pact with Pakistan has been kept in abeyance, “I wonder if we will be able to resume the project”.
“The Wular lake in North Kashmir. The civil works you see in the video is the Tulbul Navigation Barrage. It was started in the early 1980s but had to be abandoned under pressure from Pakistan citing the Indus Water Treaty,” he wrote on the micro-blogging platform.
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