Nangal, is a Municipal Council in Rupnagar district in the Punjab, India. It is 60 km from Rupnagar in the state of Punjab in northwest India. It sits at the foot of the Shiwalik Hills where it was established after plans for a dam required the movement of previously established villages. Residential areas include Shiwalik Avenue, Naya Nangal Township, BBMB Township and downtown Nangal.The dam, located at a gorge near the (now submerged) upstream Bhakra village in Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh, which is about 13 km upstream from Nangal townshi, is Asia's second tallest at 225.55 m (740 ft) high next to the 261m Tehri Dam also in India. The length of the dam (measured from the road above it) is 518.25 m; it is 9.1 m broad. Its reservoir, known as the "Gobind Sagar", stores up to 9.34 billion cubic meters of water, enough to drain the whole of Chandigarh, parts of Haryana, Punjab and Delhi. The 90 km long reservoir created by the Bhakra Dam is spread over an area of 168.35 km2. In terms of storage of water, it withholds the second largest reservoir in India, the first being Indira Sagar dam in Madhya Pradesh with capacity of 12.22 billion cubic mtr.
BAKHRA-NANGAL DAM
The Bhakra-Nangal multipurpose dams were among the earliest river valley development schemes undertaken by India after independence though the project had been conceived long before India became a free nation. Preliminary works commenced in 1946. Construction of the dam started in 1948, Jawahar Lal Nehru poured the first bucket of concrete into the foundations of Bhakra on 17 November 1955 and the dam was completed by the end of 1963. Successive stages were completed by the early 1970s.
