When water was first released into the Ravi Canal from the Shahpur Kandi Dam, located on the Ravi River in Punjab’s Pathankot district, on May 4 this year, it came as a massive relief. By then, the project had been pending for 44 years, beset by delays caused by a paucity of funds and an interstate dispute between Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. Its operationalisation appeared to bring an end to a mammoth undertaking and was expected to significantly improve water availability in one of the UT’s major irrigation networks.But months later, officials are learnt to have found a major glitch: the water-carrying capacity of the Ravi Canal has fallen from its designed capacity of 1,150 cusecs to only 400 cusecs.According to officials, the capacity of the canal, which is a major irrigation network for the plains of Kathua and Samba, has gone down because of wild growth and deterioration of both the canal and its distribution network.“The J&K government has approached the Central Water Commission with a request for Rs 534 crore to undertake restoration,” one official said.The multi-purpose Shahpur Kandi Dam was first proposed on the Ravi River following an agreement between then Jammu and Kashmir State Chief Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. The project, part of India’s efforts to utilise its share of the Ravi’s waters — one of the three Eastern Rivers allocated to India under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty — was designed to have seven hydro-generating sets in two power houses: six of 33 MW each and one of 8 MW.The 79.8-km-long Ravi Canal was part of the Ravi-Tawi Irrigation Canal (RTIC) network, joining the Tawi Canal that comes from Jammu in Samba district’s Vijaypur area. The canal was meant to irrigate the arid Kandi land in the plains of Kathua and Samba districts and was taken up in 1974-75. It was completed in 1981-82.The Shahpur Kandi project is important to J&K because it enables the UT to receive its 1,150-cusec share of Ravi water through gravity, replacing the expensive lift-irrigation system it has depended on for decades. The Ravi Canal was specifically built to carry this water to the arid Kandi lands of Kathua and Jammu, where natural water resources are scarce and agricultural productivity is low. The project is expected to create irrigation potential for 32,173 hectares in J&K, while the Ravi is already the main source of irrigation water for agricultural land in Kathua.Story continues below this adConstruction of the dam began in May 1999, 16 years after former prime minister Indira Gandhi laid its foundation stone in 1982, but stalled again, beset mostly by funding problems. Major construction began in 2013, only to be halted the next year following a dispute between Punjab and J&K. Work resumed in November 2018 after the two states reached an agreement.Given the delays, J&K began to find its own solution to the water shortage, installing pumping stations at Basantpur and Lakhanpur in 1994-95 to lift water directly from the Ravi River and put it into the already-built Ravi Canal. However, even with these pumps, water could not reach the tail end of the canal.In 2025, the Shahpur Kandi Dam project was finally completed. In May, water was released through the canal.According to a senior officer of the J&K Irrigation and Flood Control Department, while the Ravi and Tawi canals have a combined distribution network of 600 km and have the potential to irrigate 75,652 hectares of arid land in Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts, only half of this is being utilised so far.Story continues below this adIn its response to a question from BJP MLA Devinder Singh last month, the Jammu & Kashmir government acknowledged the problem, saying that due to “limited discharge received from Shahpur Kandi Dam, continuous availability of water in Ramgarh area cannot be ensured”.“Accordingly, water is presently being supplied to Ramgarh area as per approved Warabandi schedule, i.e., for two days in a week,” it added, pointing out that the commissioning of water supply from Shahpur Kandi Dam has resulted in improvement of overall water availability in the Ravi Canal system.But officials say that even if funds are released, utilising the canal’s full capacity could take time, with the government estimating that the renovation and repair project would take as long as two years.