Anangpur Dam


The Anangpur Dam is an Indian hydraulic engineering structure built during the reign of King Anangpal of the Tomara dynasty in the 8th century, located near the Anagpur village in Faridabad district, Haryana, India. It is approachable by road from Delhi from the Delhi - Mathura road. The ruins of the fortifications found in Anangpur village establishes by an inference that it was built by Anangpal as part of the Lal Kot that was developed as the first city of Delhi in the 8th century. It is an important biodiversity area within the Northern Aravalli leopard wildlife corridor stretching from Sariska Tiger Reserve to Delhi. Historical place around sanctuary are Badkhal Lake, 10th century ancient Surajkund reservoir, Damdama Lake, Tughlaqabad Fort and Adilabad ruins, Chhatarpur Temple. It is contiguous to the seasonal waterfalls in Pali-Dhuaj-Kot villages of Faridabad, the scared Mangar Bani and the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary. There are several dozen lakes formed in the abandoned open pit mines in and around the area.

Topography

A local nala originating in the Aravalli hills was intercepted by building a dam at a chasm to store rain water. It is basically a water harvesting structure meant to store rain water during the monsoon season for beneficial uses of irrigation.

History

The ruler of Anagpal Tomer/Tanwar moved his capital to the south of the Aravalli hills, south of the present day Delhi at the far end of the 10th century. Within the boundaries of the present day Haryana, on the border with Delhi, they built the Surajkund reservoir near Surjakund village and another dam in its close vicinity near the Arangpur village as the Anangpur dam. It is said that Anangpal who built Surjakund and Arangpal who built Arangpur dam belonged to the same dynasty but belonged in different periods.

Structure

The ancient and solid gravity dam structure, a pre-Islamic structure that fords a local nala is in height and in length between the two banks. It has been built with quartzite stones, duly chiselled and dressed, as a regular dam section with downstream base width increasing in steps with depth up to the foundation. It has entry manholes from the top of the dam, which lead into the body of the dam for inspection and control of flow through sluices for downstream uses. The intake entry into the sluice is on the upstream side. The downstream outlet end leads to the flat terrain below the dam at the ground level. The reservoir created by the dam is mostly silted over the centuries, but it is said to be in use.

Access

Anagpur, which is from the dam, is from Delhi city and is approachable from Qutub Minar and Surajkund. But the access to the dam is through a path from the Anagpur village, which goes through flat pastureland and then over a rocky forested hill. Sarai metro station is nearest.

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