Punjab Floods: State Government Suspends Three Officials Over Madhopur Barrage Gate Collapse
Jalandhar: The Punjab government on September 20 ordered an inquiry and suspended three officials – an executive engineer and two others – in the collapse of three floodgates of Madhopur Barrage following torrential rains and floods in the state in the last week of August.
Three of the 54 floodgates of the barrage had collapsed on August 27 following heavy rainfall in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Punjab, which caused the Ravi river to overflow.
Madhopur Headworks is a barrage situated 23 kilometres downstream of the Punjab government-owned Ranjit Sagar Dam at Pathankot district.
Incessant rains, excess water coming in from the Ranjit Sagar dam and the swollen Ravi led to the collapse of the floodgates, thereby submerging the border districts of Pathankot, Gurdaspur and Amritsar.
In this image released on Sept. 9, 2025, a view of a flood-affected as seen during an aerial survey conducted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in Gurdaspur, Punjab. Photo: PMO via PTI.
The incident has led to the death of an employee of the Water Resources Department, who was swept away by the Ravi after he along with two others had gone to manually open the gates. The two others, who had been stuck at the barrage, were later rescued.
Three officials suspended
As per an order of Krishan Kumar, the principal secretary of the Water Resources Department, dated September 15, the suspended officials are executive engineer Nitin Sood (Gurdaspur Canal and Ground Water Division), sub-divisional officer Arun Kumar and junior engineer Sachin Thakur. The trio have been transferred to Chief Engineer Headquarters at Chandigarh, to join the investigation.
The State Dam Safety Organisation has constituted an independent five-member expert committee. It had the chairman of Dam Safety Management and Hydro-Mechanical expert A.K. Bajaj, geotechnical expert Pardeep Kumar Gupta, the Hydrology wing's Sanjiv Suri, civil and structural expert N.K. Jain and mechanical expert Vias Dev.
In its order, the director of the State Dam Safety Organisation of the Water Resources Department stated that the recent floods of 2025 have damaged Madhopur Barrage, in which three gates were washed away on August 27.
The Wire has learnt that the expert committee will investigate the structural, mechanical, hydrological, geotechnical, and operational causes leading to the incident. They will also examine the condition and performance of gates and its embedded parts, current hoisting arrangements and the stability of civil structures, among other things.
The committee will also recommend immediate and long-term remedial and rehabilitation measures at the barrage. A report of the committee’s findings will be submitted through the chief engineer of Canals at the Water Resources Department in Punjab.
Punjab Water Resources minister Barinder Kumar Goyal while talking to The Wire earlier had said that action would be taken against guilty officials for negligence in duty.
Soon after the collapse of the Madhopur Barrage gates, minister Goyal had issued a show cause notice to a private firm, Level 9 Biz Private Limited, for damage to the floodgates. The company had been hired to look after the upkeep of the barrage and had submitted a report in December 2024 stating that the flood gates of the Madhopur barrage were in perfect condition.
The boat of a rescue team stuck in the middle of a village flooded by overflowing Ravi River near Ajnala-Gurdaspur stretch.
A historical structure
Madhopur Headworks is one of the first irrigation projects constructed by the Britishers to provide irrigation water to the districts of the then undivided Punjab – Gurdaspur, Amritsar and Lahore.
After Independence, India signed the Indus Water Treaty and got the exclusive rights to utilise the waters of the Ravi. The 19th century Madhopur Barrage was rebuilt in the year 1959 and has been serving the irrigation needs of Punjab since then .
The discharge from Ranjit Sagar Dam during the 2025 floods was 2.15 lakh cusecs, over 2 lakh cusecs came from in Ujh River and 9.89 lakh cusecs came from other rivulets of Pathankot and neighbouring Pakistan, amounting to a total of to 14.11 lakh cusecs. While the amount of water in Ravi was 11.21 lakh cusecs during the 1988 floods, it was 14.11 lakh cusecs in 2025.
Also read: Activists and Environmentalists Question Role of Dams as Punjab Battles Flood
Quantum of silt, poor maintenance to be investigated
A Punjab government official said, requesting anonymity, that the Madhopur Barrage gates were opened only when Ravi’s flow went out of control.
“The barrage works as per an Operations and Maintenance manual which is notified and updated in accordance with the State Dam Safety Organisation's rules. The maintenance schedule of the barrage is checked twice a year and includes geo-referencing for real time satellite images, major repairs, removing any rusted parts and painting the gates. It is the Junior Engineer who is supposed to report any immediate remedial measures to the officials," he said.
The official said, “In Madhopur Barrage, the quantum of silt was so high that it led to jamming of the gates. When the water level of Ravi increased, it built pressure on the gates and it led to its collapse. The poor maintenance and greasing of the floodgates were also primary reasons behind this fiasco. We are waiting for the findings of the expert committee to understand the cause of the collapse of the barrage gates.”
Another Punjab government official shared that once the inter-state Shahpur Kandi Dam becomes operational, it would reduce the wastage of Ravi river water which goes downstream to Pakistan.
“The dam is almost ready. We were expecting the dam’s operation to begin but Indo-Pak tensions and then torrential rains coupled with floods in the region brought the work to a halt. The Shahpur Kandi dam would be linked with the Upper Bari Doab Canal making it yet another major channel of irrigation for both Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, as it is an inter-state dam situated on Ravi river," the official shared.
Earlier, it was learnt that the Punjab Water Resources Department has earmarked 68 major sites in the flood affected region which require immediate remedial measures. The Punjab government had been making estimates to rebuild these sites at the earliest, a government official told this reporter.
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