Rivers, Canals and Dams of Punjab

The name Punjab means "land of five rivers". The five rivers are the Sutlej, Beas, Ravi, Chenab and Jhelum. After 1947 only three of them — the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi — flow through Indian Punjab. Their water is stored in big dams like Bhakra, Pong and Ranjit Sagar, turned into canals at headworks like Ropar, Harike and Madhopur, and carried to the fields by canals like the Sirhind Canal. This page explains all of it in simple words, with the tables that exams use again and again.

• Only three of the five rivers flow through Indian Punjab today: the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi. The Chenab and Jhelum are in Jammu & Kashmir and Pakistan.
• The Sutlej is the longest of the five. It is called the "backbone of Punjab" because Bhakra, Nangal, Ropar, Harike and the Sirhind Canal all depend on it.
• The Beas is the only one of the five that flows wholly inside India. It never enters Pakistan — it ends in the Sutlej at Harike.
• The Ravi is usually called the smallest river of Punjab — it carries the least water of the five. It forms a large part of the India–Pakistan border in Gurdaspur and Amritsar. Lahore stands on its bank.
• The Jhelum does not reach Indian Punjab at all. It flows past Srinagar and Wular Lake and joins the Chenab.

• The Ghaggar is a seasonal river (it flows mainly in the monsoon). It is not one of the five rivers.
• It rises in the Shivalik hills near Dagshai (Himachal Pradesh), passes Panchkula, and then flows through Patiala, Sangrur and Mansa.
• It dies out in the sands of Rajasthan, where it is called the Hakra. Because it is lost in the desert, it is sometimes called the "dead river".
• Many scholars identify it with the Vedic river Saraswati (Sarsuti).
• Its tributaries are the Tangri and the Markanda.
• The flat alluvial plain along the Ghaggar in south-east Punjab is called the Nali (also written Nally).

• Bhakra Dam stands on the Sutlej at Bhakra village in Bilaspur district, Himachal Pradesh — not inside Punjab. At 226 m it is among the highest dams in India. It is a concrete gravity dam: a heavy concrete wall that holds the water back by its own weight.
• Its reservoir, Gobind Sagar, is named after Guru Gobind Singh Ji. By storage capacity, exam keys (for example PPSC 2023) give it as the third largest reservoir of India, after Indira Sagar (Madhya Pradesh) and Nagarjuna Sagar. Some books rank it second, because rankings change with how capacity is measured — answer third when it is offered.
• Jawaharlal Nehru dedicated Bhakra to the nation on 22 October 1963. He called such projects the "temples of modern India".
• The Bhakra–Nangal project is a multipurpose project on the Sutlej: it gives irrigation and hydroelectric power to Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and others.
• The Nangal Dam is 13 km downstream, at Nangal in Rupnagar district (Punjab).
• The Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB), Chandigarh, runs the Bhakra–Nangal and Beas projects. It was set up under the Punjab Reorganisation Act 1966 as the Bhakra Management Board and got its present name in 1976.

• The Ranjit Sagar Dam was earlier called the Thein Dam, after Thein village. It was renamed after Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
• It is on the Ravi, near Shahpur Kandi, and is a 600 MW hydroelectric project — Punjab's biggest hydel power house.
• It is in Pathankot district. Pathankot was carved out of Gurdaspur in 2011, so older books say "Gurdaspur".
• The Pong Dam on the Beas (Kangra, HP) is an earth-fill dam (made of earth and rock). Its lake, Maharana Pratap Sagar, is itself a Ramsar wetland.

• Harike Pattan (Tarn Taran district) is where the Beas joins the Sutlej. This confluence (meeting point of two rivers) is the most-asked fact on this page.
• The Harike barrage was built here in 1952–53. The lake behind it became the Harike wetland.
• The wetland spreads over three districts: Tarn Taran, Ferozepur and Kapurthala. It does not reach Ludhiana. (Tarn Taran was part of Amritsar district until 2006, so old books write "Amritsar".)
• It is the largest wetland of north India and a famous bird sanctuary for winter migratory birds. It became a Ramsar site (a wetland of world importance) on 23 March 1990.
• Other Punjab Ramsar sites on rivers: Kanjli (Kali Bein, Kapurthala), Ropar (behind the Ropar headworks), Nangal and the Beas Conservation Reserve. More on the wetlands page.

• The Sirhind Canal takes water from the Sutlej at the Ropar (Rupnagar) headworks, where the river enters the plains. It opened in 1882 and is one of the oldest and biggest canal systems of Punjab.
• It is named after the Sirhind tract that it waters — not after the place where it starts. It does not start at Sirhind town.
• At Doraha (Ludhiana district) the main canal splits into its three main branches — the Abohar, Bathinda and Patiala branches. The smaller Kotla and Ghaggar branches also belong to the Sirhind system.
• The Upper Bari Doab Canal starts from the Ravi at Madhopur near Pathankot and waters the Bari Doab (Majha).

• The Indus Waters Treaty was signed at Karachi on 19 September 1960 by Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan's President Ayub Khan. The World Bank helped to make the deal.
• In April 2025 India announced it was holding the treaty in abeyance (on hold). Check the latest position before your exam.
• Inside India, Punjab's river waters are shared with Haryana and Rajasthan. Punjab says it has no surplus water and follows the riparian principle (water belongs to the state the river flows through).