West Seti Power Project: Nepal
India will be taking over West Seti Hydropower Project nearly four years after China withdrew from it, ending a six-year engagement between 2012 and 2018.
- Earlier, the Indian Prime Minister visited Lumbini, where he celebrated 2566th Buddha Jayanti celebrations, also Nepal invited India to invest in West Seti Hydropower Project.
- West Seti Power Project is a proposed 750-megawatt Hydropower Project, which is to be built on the Seti river in far-western Nepal, which has remained on the drawing board for the last six decades.
- Lately, the government has remodeled the project as West Seti and Seti River (SR-6), a joint storage project, with the capacity to generate 1,200 megawatts of electricity.
- This storage or reservoir will fill up during the monsoon season and the water will be drawn to generate power during peak hours each day in the dry season.
- Its success is expected to restore India’s image in Nepal and give it weightage in future considerations for hydropower projects, when competition is bound to be tough.
- West Seti, therefore, has the potential to be a defining model for Nepal India’s power relations in future.
