A short history of the Sardar Sarovar Dam on river Narmada

The Sardar Sarovar project was a vision of the first deputy prime minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The foundation stone of the project was laid out by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on April 5, 1961

On occasion of his 67th birthday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada river. The project which has been the subject of much controversy for decades now is reported to be one of the largest dams in the world. Having a length of 1.2 kms and a depth of 163 metres, the dam is expected to be shared among the three states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. “Four crore Gujaratis will get drinking water and 22,000 hectares of land will be irrigated,” claimed union minister Nitin Gadkari on the benefits of the project and added that the dam will help realise PM Modi’s dream of making poor farmers wealthy by 2022.
The Sardar Sarovar project was a vision of the first deputy prime minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The foundation stone of the project was laid out by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on April 5, 1961 after carrying out a study on the usage of the Narmada river water that flowed through the states of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and into the Arabian Sea. A project report prepared for the dam led to much dispute over the means of distributing the Narmada water among the three states- Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. As the negotiations bore no fruit, a Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal (NWDT) was created in 1969 to decide the fate of the project.