River(Impounds): Krishana
Location: Nalgonda district, Telangana & Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh
Opening: 1967
Height(Metres): 124 Metres
Length(Metres): 1,550 Metres
Total Capacity(Acre FT): 9,371,845
History
The proposal to construct a dam to use the excess waters of the Krishna river was planned by the Nizam of Hyderabad and engaged British Engineers in 1903 to irrigate Telangana though the work was never funded and made no progress. Since then, various competing sites in Siddeswaram and Pulichintala were identified as the most suitable locations for the reservoirs.
The perseverance and logistics support of Raja Vasireddy Ramagopala Krishna Maheswar Prasad paved way for the identification and selection of dam site.The Raja made a matching grant of fifty two lakh Rupees (one hundred million British Pounds) and several thousand acres of ancestral land for the construction of the dam. The dam was built with local know how under the able engineering leadership of K.L. Rao a member of parliament from Vijayawada constituency.
Project construction was officially inaugurated by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on 10 December 1955 and proceeded for the next twelve years. The reservoir water was released into the left and right bank canals by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1967. Construction of the hydropower plant followed, with generation increasing between 1978 and 1985, as additional units came into service. In the year 2015, diamond jubilee celebrations of project’s inauguration was celebrated remembering the prosperity the dam has ushered in the region.
The construction of the dam submerged an ancient Buddhist settlement, Nagarjunakonda, which was the capital of the Ikshvaku dynasty in the 1st and 2nd centuries, the successors of the Satavahanas in the Eastern Deccan. Excavations here had yielded 30 Buddhist monasteries, as well as art works and inscriptions of great historical importance. In advance of the reservoir’s flooding, monuments were dug up and relocated. Some were moved to Nagarjunakonda, now an island in the middle of the reservoir. Others were moved to the nearby mainland village called Anupu.