Gandhisagar Dam is situated at a distance of 168 km from the District headquarter. The Dam is constructed on the Chambal River.
The Gandhi Sagar Dam is one of the four major dams built on India's Chambal River. The dam is located in the Mandsaur, districts of the state of Madhya Pradesh. It is a masonry gravity dam, standing high, with a gross storage capacity of 7.322 billion cubic metres from a catchment area of . The dam's foundation stone was laid by Prime Minister of India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on 7 March 1954, and construction of the main dam was done by leading contractor Dwarka Das Agrawal & Associates and was completed in 1960. Additional dam structures were completed downstream in the 1970s.
The dam sports a 115-MW hydroelectric power station at its toe, with five 23-MW generating units each providing a total energy generation of about 564 GWh. The water released after power generation is used for the irrigation of by the Kota Barrage, which is located downstream of the dam, near the city of Kota in the state of Rajasthan.
It attracts many migratory and non-migratory birds throughout the year. The International Bird Life Agency (IBA) has qualified the reservoir under "A4iii" criteria, as the congregation of waterbirds is reported to exceed 20,000 at some points.
Geography
The Chambal River (known in ancient times as the Chamranyavati River) raises in the Vindhya Range at an elevation of , west-southwest of the town of Mhow, near Indore. It flows north-northeast through Madhya Pradesh, runs for a time through Rajasthan, then forms the boundary between Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh before turning southeast to join the Yamuna River in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Its total length from its source to its confluence with the Yamuna River is .
The Chambal and its tributaries drain the Malwa region of northwestern Madhya Pradesh, while its tributary, the Banas, which rises in the Aravalli Range, drains southeastern Rajasthan. At its confluence with the Yamuna, the Chambal joins four other rivers – the Yamuna, Kwari, Sind, and Pahuj – at Pachnada near Bhareh in Uttar Pradesh, at the border of the Bhind and Etawah districts. The river is drained by a rain-fed catchment area with an average annual rainfall of , a temperature range of between and , and a relative humidity ranging from 30% to 90%.
Between and from the Chambal's source is an area of deep gorges; the Gandhi Sagar Dam is located in the middle reach of this gorge section. The dam is situated at a distance of from the district administrative headquarters of Mandsaur.
Construction history
The Chambal River Valley Development marked one of the landmark actions of the First Five-Year Plan launched by the Government of India in 1951, after India attained independence in August 1947. The Chambal River had not until then been used for any major developmental works, and was proposed to be developed under a joint initiative of the state governments of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The three-stage proposal, drawn up in 1953, called for three dams to provide hydroelectric power generation, and a downstream barrage to use stored waters released from the upstream dams for irrigation. The river's drop of between its source in Mhow and the city of Kota, which marks the exit of the river from its gorge section into the plains of Rajasthan, was seen as having great hydroelectric potential.
Stage I
The first stage of the development involved construction of the Gandhi Sagar Dam to a height of a as a storage dam to store 7,32,20,00,000 cubic metres in Madhya Pradesh and use the stored water for hydroelectric power generation, followed by irrigation from the Kota Barrage in Rajasthan, downstream of the dam. Power generation at Gandhi Sagar Dam was through a powerhouse at the toe of the dam, with a total installed capacity of 115 MW (divided into five units of 23 MW). The Kota Barrage, an earth and masonry structure in height, was built to provide irrigation through a canal system, with two main canals on the right and left banks. Construction of both projects began in 1953–54; both began functioning in 1960. The water received at the Kota Barrage is shared equally between Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan for irrigation.