Mann to inaugurate Shahpurkandi Dam today

Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann will inaugurate the Shahpurkandi Dam project on the occasion of Gurpurb on Wednesday. The construction of the dam began in the 1999 and it is set to be inaugurated after about 26 years.

With the commissioning of the project, 1.18 lakh hectares in Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur and Pathankot districts will get irrigation facilities. The inauguration has been scheduled at the time when the bypoll to the Tarn Taran constituency is just a week away.

The construction of the power house project at the dam is likely to be complete by March 2026.

While the machinery for the construction of the dam on the Ravi arrived in 1999, the tenders for the work were floated in May 2012, with the construction work starting in March 2013.

Even after that, the project remained mired in controversy. The Jammu and Kashmir Government stopped the work in August 2013 due to an inter-state dispute. The work restarted on November 1, 2018.

The Shahpurkandi Dam is 50.5 m high with 4.23 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) storage capacity. The total cost is said to be Rs 3,394 crore.

In all, 3,172 acres were acquired for the project, out of which 1,644 acres were acquired from the farmers of Punjab and 1,528 from Jammu and Kashmir.