New Delhi/Shimla, June 17 -- At a meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the long-pending 422-MW Kishau Dam project on a tributary of Yamuna, a government statement said. The dam is proposed to be built on the Tons river along the Uttarakhand-Himachal Pradesh border at an estimated cost of around Rs 15,000 crore. The project has been pending for more than eight years. The project will help increase the water flow in the Yamuna, ensuring a clean and pure river, a home ministry spokesperson said in the statement. "In exchange for Himachal Pradesh's cost-sharing portion of the power component, an agreement was reached to transfer water allocated for Himachal Pradesh to Delhi and Rajasthan," the statement said. The meeting was attended by Union power minister Manohar Lal, Jal Shakti minister C R Patil, Himachal Pradesh chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and Union home secretary Govind Mohan. After the meeting, the HP government said the Centre has cleared bottlenecks in the proposed project, with the state's Rs 2,000-crore share in the power component to be now borne by the beneficiary states of the project's water component. Sukhu has succeeded in breaking the eight-year deadlock over bearing the financial cost, the statement said. SEE PAGE 2...