page_title: Gandhi Sagar Dam
section_title: Construction history
hierarchical_section_title: Gandhi Sagar Dam / Construction history
caption_attribution_description: Gandhi_Sagar_Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, India
context_page_description: The Gandhi Sagar Dam is one of the four major dams built on India's Chambal River. The dam is located in the Mandsaur, Neemuch districts of the state of Madhya Pradesh. It is a masonry gravity dam, standing 62.17 metres high, with a gross storage capacity of 7.322 billion cubic metres from a catchment area of 22,584 km². 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 427,000 hectares by the Kota Barrage, which is located 104 kilometres downstream of the dam, near the city of Kota in the state of Rajasthan.
  , and attracts many migratory and non-migratory birds throughout the year.
context_section_description: 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 625 metres (2,051 ft) 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.
caption: The power station on the right bank of the dam and the downstream bridge across the Chambal River.
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