Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra governments reached an agreement on pending issues related to the Narmada Project.
It relates to the cost-sharing arrangements for the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Project.
This also resolved the decades-old dispute regarding the displacement of people from flood-affected areas and compensation for land in the Narmada River Project.
The Sardar Sarovar Dam is one of 25 major dams planned on the Narmada River and stands as the largest among them.
It is the one of the largest concrete dam in the world by the volume of concrete used in its construction.
Sardar Sarovar Dam is located in Gujarat’s Narmada district, right on the border between Gujarat and Maharashtra.
To its west lies the Malwa plateau of Madhya Pradesh, where the Narmada River cuts through rugged hill tracts before reaching the Mathwar hills.
With a spillway discharge capacity of 30 lakh cusecs (85,000 cumecs), it ranks third in the world, behind China’s Gezhouba (1.13 lakh cumecs) and Brazil’s Tucuruí (1.0 lakh cumecs).
At 163 metres, the dam is India’s third-highest concrete dam, after Bhakra (226 metres) in Himachal Pradesh and Lakhwar (192 metres) in Uttarakhand.
By volume of concrete used in a gravity dam, it is the second largest globally with 6.82 million cubic metres — only the Grand Coulee Dam in the United States (8.0 million cu.m.) is larger.
Overlooking the reservoir stands the Statue of Unity, the world’s tallest statue, built as a tribute to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.