Tripura government’s much-vaunted Sadhupara dam in limbo, funds sanctioned but no administrative approval

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, July 31, 2026

The state government’s once much-vaunted Sadhupara dam at the foot of the Barmura range seems to have gone into limbo as evident from reply to a RTI query furnished by the water resource department recently . It was in the year 2020 that the then chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb had visited the site of the project in Sadhupara area near Champak Nagar where a barrage and a water reservoir was to be built to save the people living in the river Hawrah basin downstream from Champak Nagar to Baldakhal . The site had been selected and initial preparation was made but then there has been no progress in implementation of the project in spite of annual sanction of funds on this head made by the government in budgets. The reason cited for stalling of the project is that there was no administrative approval for it.

The RTI reply said that the ground work for the project implementation had been made through consultation with people living close to the project site and a detailed project report (DPR) had also been prepared for constructing a reservoir and barrage at Sadhupara but it did not get off the ground. For this particular project-that is, construction of barrage and reservoir-not fund was also sanctioned.

But the same RTI reply made it clear that annual sanction of funds was made in budgets from the year 2021-2022 to 2026-2027 for measures to protect people and crops from annual flooding in Old Agartala and Baldakhal area . But despite the fund sanction no work has so far been done to implement the protection measures because of lack of administrative approval. For the proposed Sadhupara dam near Champak Nagar a total of Rs 20 crores had been sanctioned for infrastructure but this has not yet been accorded administrative approval or expenditure sanction by the government . Hence both the projects remain stalled till date, the RTI reply stated.

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