Srinagar: Amicus Curiae appointed by the Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh High Court has suggested an independent third-party inspection and evaluation of all the temporary and permanent works for floods executed by the government to date.
The court had appointed Nadeem Qadri as amicus curiae and asked him to come up with suggestions and recommendations for the protection and conservation of Jhelum and other water bodies.
A few months back, Qadri submitted a detailed list of recommendations and suggestions to save Kashmir’s water bodies and mitigate the flood threats.
“An independent third-party Inspection and evaluation of all the temporary and permanent works for floods executed by the government till date to justify the enormous amount of expenditure incurred with physical progress achieved and the impact of such works for Flood protection in the valley based on Environmental Assessment. This exercise is necessary as previous financial government audits have raised serious concerns about these works,” he said.
“The various departments to whom the Government Authorities have assigned and designated for formulation of an Inter-linkage project of River Jhelum, its tributaries, lakes, streams, and Wetlands in Jhelum’s aquatic hydraulic ecology need to accelerate formulation of this project from the point of view of Navigation and routing of flood waters through the inland waterways, FSC,” he said.
The amicus curiae has given a detailed list of remedial measures to save the water bodies and avert frequent flooding.
“We need to adopt measures for control of Silt erosion in the Jhelum catchment contributory area by afforestation, rotational grazing grasslands, avoiding land use changes, control of encroachments, and other Catchment Area Treatment works,” he said
Selective dredging of critically silted reaches of the river regime and Wular Lake to re-establish its bed and regain the lost storage capacity for flood absorption, Basin of Wular Lake,” he said.
“Sectional modeling of the river cross-section to increase and regain the hydraulic flow capacity of the river. This needs to be followed with contingent dredging of silt at the outfall channel of Sopore to counter the silt inflow from the catchment and create a draught for silt carrying in the upstream reaches of the river congenial for sediment transport,” he added.
The High Court will be hearing the matter on October 28. “We have given a long list of 50 recommendations to the government. We have yet to hear from them. Now the hearing is on October 28. Let us see what they come up with,” Qadri told The Kashmir Monitor.
Last month, Faiz Bakshi, Convenor, Environmental Policy Group, sought the immediate attention of the High Court towards the floods. “The recent flood of 2025 is even more alarming than the Sep 2014 floods since, among other things, the river rose very rapidly after only a day of rainfall. The rate of increase in water level at R M Bagh peaked at 18 inches per hour. This means that the time of concentration (time period it takes Correspondingly, the rate of receding was much lower, meaning that in case of a breach, it would take much longer to drain the inundated area,” he said.