Forty-Two Years to Act

The Machchhu II dam stood on the Machchhu river in Saurashtra, Gujarat, completed in 1972. It was a composite structure: approximately four kilometres of earthen embankment flanking a central masonry spillway, holding back a reservoir of about 101 million cubic metres. By the standards of the day, it was unremarkable. By the standards of dam-safety history, it became one of the most studied failures in the world.

On 11 August 1979, the dam was seven years old. The monsoon that year delivered a flood that contemporary analyses estimate at between three and nearly five times the spillway's design capacity. Three of the spillway gates were not functioning properly. The masonry spillway structure itself held. The earthen embankments on either side of it overtopped, breached, and released the reservoir. A flood wave between 12 and 30 feet high reached the industrial town of Morbi, five kilometres downstream, in about 20 minutes.

Official Indian estimates of the death toll range from approximately 1,800 to 2,000, with the Central Water Commission figure most commonly cited in engineering literature. Contemporary press and local-government estimates in the immediate aftermath ran as high as 25,000. Machchhu II was, for years, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's worst dam burst, until the death toll of the 1975 Banqiao failure was declassified in 2005.

What happened next, in regulatory terms, took four decades.

In May 1979, three months before Machchhu, the Central Dam Safety Organisation had already been established within the Central Water Commission, on the recommendation of the First Conference of State Ministers of Irrigation held in July 1975. In August 1982, in direct response to Machchhu and a sequence of related failures, the Government of India constituted a Standing Committee under the Chairman of the Central Water Commission, M.A. Chitale, to review inspection and maintenance practices and to recommend standards. The Standing Committee submitted its report in 1986, calling for unified dam-safety procedures and primary legislation. In October 1987 it was reconstituted as the National Committee on Dam Safety. A draft Dam Safety Bill was circulated among NCDS members the same year. Then the legislative process stalled.

The first Dam Safety Bill was introduced in Lok Sabha on 30 August 2010 under Article 252. It lapsed with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha. A revised Bill was reintroduced on 12 December 2018. It lapsed with the 16th Lok Sabha. The Bill was reintroduced again on 29 July 2019 and passed by Lok Sabha four days later, on 2 August 2019. It then sat in Rajya Sabha for more than two years. On 19 November 2021, the Annamayya dam in Andhra Pradesh breached around dawn; initial government statements cited 33 dead, later revised to at least 44 with several missing. Thirteen days later, on 2 December 2021, Rajya Sabha passed the Bill with amendments. Lok Sabha approved the amended version on 8 December 2021. The President gave assent on 13 December 2021. The Act commenced on 30 December 2021 via Gazette Notification S.O. 5422(E).

The first comprehensive dam safety evaluation for each existing specified dam shall be conducted within five years from the date of commencement of this Act.

Section 38, Chapter IX, The Dam Safety Act, 2021 (Act No. 41 of 2021)

Five years from 30 December 2021 is 30 December 2026. A specified dam, under Section 2 read with Section 4, is any dam above 15 metres in height, or any dam between 10 and 15 metres meeting at least one of five criteria related to crest length, reservoir capacity, design flood, foundation complexity, or unusual design. By the National Register of Specified Dams 2025, India has 6,628 such dams: 6,545 operational and 83 under construction.

As of 25 November 2025, the National Dam Safety Authority reported that 1,853 dams had been screened and verified under its first nationwide risk-prioritisation exercise. That is roughly 28 per cent of the operational specified-dam population. The remaining 4,692 require comprehensive evaluation under Section 38 before the statutory window closes. Seven months remain.

The lesson: A comprehensive dam safety evaluation under Section 38 is not a paperwork exercise. Under existing Central Water Commission dam-safety practice, a CDSE covers hydraulic and hydrological adequacy, structural and seismic re-assessment, instrumentation review, foundation and seepage evaluation, and a concrete condition assessment that goes well beyond a walk-down inspection. For an owner who has not yet started, the operative question by May 2026 is not whether the deadline will be met. It is which dams in the portfolio carry the highest residual risk if the evaluation slips, and which assessment scope can defensibly be commissioned, executed, and reported within the time remaining. The clock that started in Morbi in August 1979 stops on 30 December 2026. Forty-two years to get the law on paper. Seven months left to evidence compliance on the ground.

Read more: What India's Dam Safety Act 2021 Means for Concrete Assessment and Rehabilitation →