India to send 1.5lakh tonnes wheat to Kabul via Pak

Keeping up with its commitments to Kabul, India is all set to send another 1.5 lakh tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan through Karachi port even as it finalises escalated financial approvals to restart the work at the Salma hydroelectric and irrigation dam project - built over Hari river at Chisti Sharif in the country's Herat province.

Updated on: Jul 30, 2012, 01:31:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Keeping up with its commitments to Kabul, India is all set to send another 1.5 lakh tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan through Karachi port even as it finalises escalated financial approvals to restart the work at the Salma hydroelectric and irrigation dam project - built over Hari river at Chisti Sharif in the country's Herat province.

With the external affairs ministry setting up the new Development Projects Administration (DPA) wing solely to monitor India-aided projects, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka have become New Delhi's focus areas in the sub-continent.

Senior MEA officials said financial bids for the transportation of 1.5 lakh tonnes of wheat to Kandla will be finalised next week.

Part of India's commitment to supply 1.1 million tonnes of the food grain, the latest tranche will be lifted by ships hired by the Afghan government to Karachi port, and from there to Kabul for distribution.

Until now, India has supplied 600,000 tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan, of which 500,000 tonnes was in the form of fortified biscuits.

While New Delhi is exploring opportunities to send wheat and other goods through Chahbahar port in Iran, the last wheat shipment went through Karachi port as part of the bilateral agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The DPA, which revived the Salma Dam project in Herat, has approached the finance ministry to approve cost escalation emanating from security problems posed by Taliban insurgents, and certain vested interests in Pakistan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

Catch every big hit, every wicket with Crickit, a one stop destination for Live Scores, Match Stats, Infographics & much more. Explore now!

Stay updated with all top Cities including, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and more across India. Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News along with Delhi Election 2025 and Delhi Election Result 2025 Live, New Delhi Election Result Live, Kalkaji Election Result Live at Hindustan Times.