On Saturday, Tariq Hamid Karra, the president of the Jammu and Kashmir Congress, criticized the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC). He said that NHPC is exploiting the resources of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and acting like the East India Company, a group known for taking advantage of India in the past.
While discussing the budget in the J&K Assembly, Karra mentioned that NHPC has charged around Rs 300 crore as consultancy fees from local companies over the past ten years. He noted that the NHPC took part in the Chenab Valley Power Projects (CVPP), which was a joint project with a state-owned company after a power project was successfully built by the J&K Power Development Corporation in 2008.
Karra raised concerns about why CVPP still pays NHPC consultancy fees of Rs 30 crore every year, even after NHPC took over a small share of the project in 2021. He asked why important positions like the Chairman are not filled by local engineers and why local workers are being treated unfairly in promotions.
Karra also shared that a lot of mining blocks in J&K were sold to companies from outside the region after 2019. He called attention to how illegal mining is harming J&K’s resources, comparing it to well-known fraudsters who have taken advantage of people and resources.
He concluded by saying that if a report were made about the financial management of J&K over the past seven years—when there was no elected government—it would reveal a lot of waste and exploitation in the region.
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