MP dam breach: Channel created to drain out water

A channel was dug up to drain out water from an under-construction dam on the Karam river after a breach in a wall of the reservoir in Madhya Pradeshs Dhar district, officials said on Sunday.The water started releasing safely through the channel at 3 am on Sunday, they said.With this, the threat of the dam bursting due to the water pressure and causing a disaster has reduced, some experts said.

A channel was dug up to drain out water from an under-construction dam on the Karam river after a breach in a wall of the reservoir in Madhya Pradesh's Dhar district, officials said on Sunday.

The water started releasing safely through the channel at 3 am on Sunday, they said.

With this, the threat of the dam bursting due to the water pressure and causing a disaster has reduced, some experts said. Also, a pause in rains in Dhar since Friday has stopped further accumulation of water in the reservoir which would have otherwise complicated the situation, they said. On Thursday, leakage was reported from the dam, being constructed about 35 km from the district headquarters at a cost of Rs 304 crore, following which an alert was sounded downstream of the reservoir.

Eighteen villages downstream would have submerged had the dam burst. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan kept an eye on the situation from his office for 16 hours in the secretariat and returned home at 3 am on Sunday after the dam water started draining out through the channel, the CM's office said. The CM was back in his office at 11 am on Sunday to monitor the situation further, a government release said. Chouhan has informed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah about the water leak from the dam, the CM's office said.

Teams of the Army, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and other agencies were at work and prepared to deal with any emergency situation. Two helicopters of the Indian Air Force (IAF) had also been put on standby, officials said. Thousands of people from 12 villages in Dhar district and six villages in Khargone have already been shifted to safer places, they said.

State Water Resources Minister Tulsi Silawat and Industries Minister Rajvardhan Singh Dattigaon had gone to the dam site to take stock of the situation, the officials said.