President Ashraf Ghani and Prime Minister Modi to attend virtual summit on Afghan dam project

This will be the first such summit for New Delhi in 2021 and apart from the two heads of state, India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar and his Afghan counterpart Mohammed Haneef Atmar are also likely to attend the meeting, according to a TOLOnews report.

The Shahtoot dam is expected to provide clean water to around 2 million residents in Kabul and will be the second dam that India will be building in Afghanistan, the report said.

Afghan officials have said that the estimated cost of the dam will be about $236 million and will take about three years to complete.

The dam would also allow provide for the irrigation systems that will cover 4,000 hectares of land in the Charasiab and Khairabad districts.

Once completed the dam will have the capacity to hold 146 million cubic meters of potable water for two million people in Kabul and irrigation water for over 400,000 acres of land, the report said quoting Afghan officials.

Afghanistan and India are expected to sign the agreement on the Shahtoot dam that will be constructed on the Kabul river.

The agreement for the dam was announced by Indian external affairs minister during his address to the Afghanistan 2020 Conference in November, the report said.