BharatNotes Rivers, lakes and water rose from 5.0% of the Geography unit in the older papers to 7.9% in the recent ones. Almost all of it is locational recall — which water body sits in which district — and the rest is the vocabulary of traditional harvesting, where a single word separates one structure from another.
The state's own framing of the problem is the place to start. Rajasthan is India's largest state by area and eighth by population; it carries about 5.5% of the country's people and has about 1% of its available water. Every structure on this page exists because of that ratio.
1. Lakes and water bodies, district by district
This is the single most-set table in the block. RPSC's standard form is a "choose the incorrect pair" question, so learning the pairs matters more than learning the lakes.
| District | Lakes and water bodies |
|---|---|
| Ajmer | Anasagar, Foy Sagar, Pushkar |
| Udaipur | Fateh Sagar, Pichola, Udaisagar, Swaroop Sagar · Jaisamand was Udaipur's until 2023 and is now Salumber's — see the trap below |
| Jaipur | Sambhar, Chhaparwara, Jamwaramgarh |
| Jodhpur | Balsamand, Kaylana, Ummed Sagar, Pratap Sagar |
| Jaisalmer | Gadsisar, Ummed Sagar, Pratap Sagar |
| Alwar | Jai Sagar, Mansarovar, Vijay Sagar |
| Karauli | Nag Talai, Jugar, Mamchedi, Nidar |
| Kota | Jawahar Sagar |
| Chittorgarh | Rana Pratap Sagar, Bhupal Sagar |
| Churu | Tal Chhapar |
| Jalore | Bankli Bandh, Bithal Bandh |
| Jhalawar | Mansarovar |
| Jhunjhunu | Ajit Sagar Bandh |
| Tonk | Bisalpur, Tordi Sagar |
| Dungarpur | Gaib Sagar, Somkamla |
| Dausa | Kalakh Sagar |
| Dholpur | Ramsagar, Talab Shahi |
| Didwana-Kuchaman | Didwana (Nagaur before 2023) |
| Nagaur | Bhankri Molas |
| Pali | Sardar Samand |
| Balotra | Pachpadra (Barmer before 2023) |
| Baran | Ummed Sagar, Aklera Sagar |
| Banswara | Mahi, Bajaj Sagar Bandh |
| Bikaner | Lunkaransar, Anoop Sagar, Gajna |
| Bundi | Nawal Sagar, Jait Sagar, Sur Sagar |
| Bharatpur | Moti Jheel |
| Bhilwara | Mandal Tal, Khari Bandh, Jaitpura Bandh |
| Rajsamand | Rajsamand |
| Sawai Madhopur | Panchna Bandh, Morel Bandh |
| Sirohi | Nakki |
| Sikar | Raipur Bandh |
| Sri Ganganagar | Shivpur Head |
| Hanumangarh | Talwara |
TextbookSource: Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan Adhyayan, Class 10, chapter 3 (Paramparagat Jal Prabandhan), read directly from the volume. A printed textbook has no stable link, so it is cited in full rather than linked. The list is on the pre-2023 framework of 33 districts and cannot be mapped one-to-one onto the present 41. Four pairs were independently confirmed against RPSC's own 2013 answer key — Gadsisar in Jaisalmer, Kaylana in Jodhpur, Gap (Gaib) Sagar in Dungarpur, and Chand Baori at Abhaneri in Dausa.
Four traps are worth isolating before anything else.
Gadsisar is Jaisalmer, not Bikaner. RPSC built an entire question on that single misplacement in 2013, and it is the most-repeated water-body trap in the papers.
Jaisamand's district changed in 2023, and the current answer is Salumber. Salumber was carved out of Udaipur in 2023 and survived the December 2024 cull, and part of the Jaisamand sanctuary went with it — but only part. The Forest Department's own Management Plan of Jaisamand Wildlife Sanctuary, 2025-26 to 2034-35 says both things inside one document. Its preface states that the sanctuary, of which "the world famous Jaisamand Lake constitutes an integral part", "falls within revenue limits of Salumber District". Its notification text states that the sanctuary "is situated in Girwa, Sarada and Salumbar Tehsil", covering 52.342 sq km — and Girwa is a tehsil of Udaipur district, not of Salumber. Its annexures still head a table "Tehsil: SARADA District: UDAIPUR", and its advisory committee lists the Sub-Divisional Officers of Girwa, Sarada and Salumbar all under Udaipur. So the sanctuary straddles the two districts, and the Central Water Commission's dam register still gives the lake's own district as Udaipur. Two current Government of Rajasthan documents put the lake in Salumber: the Forest Department's management plan, and the Economic Review 2025-26, whose district-wise Panch Gaurav list names Jaisamand Lake as Salumber's destination and gives Udaipur's as Fateh Sagar and Pichola. Answer Salumber on the current map. Udaipur is the pre-2023 answer and is what almost every book, and the Central Water Commission's dam register, still print — and the register is explicitly on the old framework, since it also lists Jai Samand's district as Udaipur. Because the sanctuary reaches into Girwa, no single district is the whole truth about the protected area; for the lake itself the state is now consistent.
One check is worth making before trusting any post-2023 district, and Salumber passes it. Rajasthan's map moved twice, not once: 33 districts until August 2023, then 50, then 41 from 28 December 2024. Seventeen districts were created in 2023 and nine of them were abolished sixteen months later, so a district named by a document written in that window may no longer exist. The eight that were created and kept are Balotra, Beawar, Deeg, Didwana-Kuchaman, Khairthal-Tijara, Kotputli-Behror, Phalodi and Salumber. Salumber is among them, and it stands as district 41 on the Board of Revenue's roster of 22 January 2026 with five tehsils — Sarada, Semari, Lasadiya, Salumbar and Jhallara. It is not an artefact of the short-lived fifty-district map, which is exactly what has to be established before a district attribution from 2023 can be carried. Alwar separately has Jai Sagar, a different water body with a similar name, so a careless reading puts the right lake in the wrong district twice over.
Ummed Sagar and Pratap Sagar appear under both Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. The names are not unique, so a bare name without a district is not a safe answer.
The salt lakes cluster and they are not "lakes" in the ordinary sense. Sambhar (Jaipur), Didwana (Didwana-Kuchaman), Lunkaransar (Bikaner) and Pachpadra (Balotra) are saline, and they are saline for the reason set out in the physiography chapter: the Nagaur uplands drain inland, so water evaporates where it stands and leaves its salt behind. Sambhar is also Rajasthan's second Ramsar site — see the biodiversity chapter.
Two of those districts changed under the lakes. Didwana has been in Didwana-Kuchaman since the 2023 reorganisation, and Pachpadra in Balotra, and both new districts survived the December 2024 cull. Nagaur and Barmer are therefore the pre-2023 answers, not the current ones, and almost every book still prints the old pair. Expect either in an option, and note which framework the paper is using: a question set on the 41-district map wants Didwana-Kuchaman and Balotra. This site's minerals and energy chapter already places the Pachpadra refinery in Balotra, and the two pages now agree.
The Jodhpur cluster, with dates
| Lake | Built |
|---|---|
| Lalsagar | 1800 |
| Kaylana | 1872 |
| Ummed Sagar | 1931 |
| Takhat Sagar | 1932 |
TextbookSource: Rajasthan Adhyayan, Class 10, chapter 3. The chapter states these four are large enough to hold up to 70 crore cubic feet of water between them.
Jaisamand, and why its date is not settled
Jaisamand is the one lake in this chapter whose construction date two official records disagree about, and the disagreement is worth carrying rather than resolving.
The forest department's management plan describes the lake as built "three centuries ago by Maharana Jai Singh of Udaipur", measuring 14 km in length and 9 km in width, with a circumference of nearly 88 km, and calls it "one of the largest artificial sheets of fresh water in the world". Note the hedge: the department writes "one of the largest", not "the second largest in Asia", which is the superlative in general circulation and which no government document located here states.
The Central Water Commission's current register gives the year of completion as 1730, against the 1685 to 1691 span that most printed accounts give. Neither source explains the other. The attribution to Maharana Jai Singh is common to both; only the year differs, so learn the builder, and treat the year as contested.
GovtSources: Rajasthan Forest Department, Management Plan of Jaisamand Wildlife Sanctuary, 2025-26 to 2034-35, preface and section 2.2; and Central Water Commission, National Register of Specified Dams 2025, Rajasthan section, entry RA11HH0002, read directly: year of completion 1730, height 34.9 m, length 335 m, gross storage 415.25 MCM, purpose irrigation. That entry gives the district as Udaipur. The tehsil-to-district mapping is settled against the Board of Revenue's SDO-wise tehsil roster, updated 22 January 2026, read directly: Girwa is tehsil 404 of Udaipur district, while Sarada (421) and Salumbar (424) are two of Salumber district's five tehsils. That is why the sanctuary is in both districts and the plan's preface, which names only Salumber, is not the whole picture. The sanctuary itself was notified on 7 November 1955 and covers 52.342 sq km.
Ponds — the talab list
| District | Talabs |
|---|---|
| Sawai Madhopur | Sukhsagar, Kalasagar, Jangli |
| Pali | Hemawas, Dantiwara, Muthana |
| Bhilwara | Sareri, Khari, Meja |
| Chittorgarh | Padmini, Wanakiya, Muraliya, Senapani |
| Bundi | Kirti Mori, Barda, Hindoli |
| Bharatpur | Parvati, Baretha |
| Udaipur | Bagoliya |
| Jaisalmer | Gadsisar |
| Dungarpur | Edward Sagar |
TextbookSource: Rajasthan Adhyayan, Class 10, chapter 3. Pratapgarh's list runs to ten talabs — Rayapur, Gandher, Kherot, Ghotarsi, Dhalmu, Achalpur, Jajli, Achalawda, Sankhthali and Tejsagar — and is omitted from the table above only for length.
Sambhar, read from its own designation file
Sambhar carries more marks than any other water body in the state and this page has given it one clause. The document that governs it is the Ramsar Information Sheet India submitted in 1990, and it is short enough to learn whole: designated 23 March 1990, 24,000 hectares, a shallow wetland between 0.5 and 2.0 metres deep, fed by four main streams, with a catchment whose vegetation is mostly xerophytic. The sheet's stated reason for inclusion is birds. Sambhar "is famous for harbouring flamingos in large numbers, next only to Rann of Kutch in the country", and its catchment holds Uromastix, the saw-scaled viper, the desert cat and the desert fox.
One thing in that file is simply wrong, and it is worth knowing that it is wrong. The sheet places Sambhar "in the district of Jodhpur". It is not, and never was. The lake sits where Jaipur, Ajmer and the present Didwana-Kuchaman meet, several hundred kilometres from Jodhpur, and the same paragraph gives its drainage area as "about 2,688 sq. metres" where square kilometres are plainly meant. A designation file is the founding record of a Ramsar site, and it is still the weakest description of Sambhar in print. Use it for the date, the area, the depth and the flamingos. Do not use it for the district.
The salt economics need the same care. The only official national figure located here is a 2015 reply in the Lok Sabha: Rajasthan is India's third-largest salt-producing state after Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, and produced 21.58 lakh tonnes of the country's 268.87 lakh tonnes in 2014-15, which is about 8.0 per cent of national output, for the whole state and all its sources. That figure is eleven years old and no newer official state-wise series was located, so it is a floor for reasoning rather than a number to quote as current. It also puts a ceiling on the claim, widely repeated, that Sambhar alone yields 8.7 per cent of India's salt: on the only government figures available, the entire state was at eight per cent. The claim is not asserted here.
PrimaryGovtSources: Ramsar Convention, Information Sheet on Ramsar Wetlands, Sambhar Lake (Rajasthan), site 464, as submitted by the Government of India; Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Ramsar Sites of India as on 21 April 2026, which lists Sambhar at 23-03-1990, 24,000 ha; and Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Salt Production in Rajasthan, 7 August 2015. The 8.0 per cent share is arithmetic on the two published tonnages, not a published figure.
Alwar's row in the table above is now short by one. Siliserh Lake became Rajasthan's fifth Ramsar site, designated 7 July 2025 at 315.97 hectares and declared on 12 December 2025, on the Ministry's own current list. The five are Keoladeo Ghana (1 October 1981), Sambhar (23 March 1990), Menar Wetland Complex and Khichan (both 19 February 2025) and Siliserh (7 July 2025), and they are worked in full in the biodiversity chapter. Three of the five arrived inside eighteen months, so most material still prints two.
The only central programme these lakes ever had
No question on lake conservation can be answered from the harvesting side of this chapter, because the structures in section 2 are catchment works and the lakes are a separate policy object. The programme that covered the lakes was the National Lake Conservation Plan, and its Rajasthan list is small, closed and dated.
| Lake or lake system | District | Status stated |
|---|---|---|
| Mansagar | Jaipur | Project completed |
| Anasagar and Pushkar | Ajmer | Under implementation |
| Fateh Sagar and Pichola system | Udaipur | Under implementation |
| Nakki | Sirohi (Mount Abu) | "In-principle" approval only, subject to National Board for Wild Life clearance |
GovtSource: Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Environment and Forests, National Lake Conservation Plan in Rajasthan, 7 December 2009, a written reply in the Rajya Sabha; total sanctioned cost ₹214.98 crore. The release's own count is internally inconsistent. It opens by saying "three lakes of Rajasthan have been covered" and then names five, because it is counting projects and lake systems rather than lakes. Both readings are reproduced above as the Ministry wrote them.
Two things follow and both are examinable. Nakki was never a sanctioned NLCP project, only an in-principle approval waiting on a wildlife clearance, so a list that includes it among the covered lakes is wrong. And the scheme itself no longer exists. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the merger of the NLCP and the National Wetlands Conservation Programme into the National Plan for Conservation of Aquatic Eco-systems (NPCA) on 7 February 2013, on 70:30 central-state cost sharing, 90:10 for the north-eastern states. A paper asking about lake conservation today is asking about NPCA; a paper asking which Rajasthan lakes were taken up under the NLCP is asking about the four entries above.
GovtSource: Press Information Bureau, Merger of National Lake Conservation Plan and National Wetlands Conservation Programme into a new scheme, 7 February 2013, Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs decision.
2. The eight traditional structures
This is the heart of the chapter. Each structure is separable on one detail, and RPSC sets exactly those details.
| Structure | What it is | The detail that identifies it |
|---|---|---|
| Khadin | A field enclosed by an embankment below a slope, farmed on residual moisture | Begun by the Paliwal Brahmins of Jaisalmer in the 15th century. About 500 khadins in Jaisalmer irrigate 1,300 hectares. Iraq has adopted the system |
| Tanka (also kund) | A covered underground tank storing rainwater, for drinking | Built because the local groundwater is saline. 30 to 40 feet deep, saucer-shaped |
| Nadi | A village pond collecting rainwater | The first was built by Rao Jodhaji in 1520. 3 to 12 m deep in sandy tracts, holding water 10 months; larger and 12 months in alluvial soil |
| Toba | Like a nadi but deeper, on dense low-seepage ground | One toba serves up to about twenty families. Grass grows around it, so animals graze there |
| Baori | A stepwell, often beside a temple, fort or monastery | Public by design — built for religious merit, open to everyone. Chand Baori at Abhaneri stands with the Harshat Mata temple |
| Jhalara | A rectangular stepped tank fed by seepage from tanks and lakes above it | It has no catchment of its own, and its water was not for drinking — it was for religious rites and communal bathing. Jodhpur's Mahamandir Jhalara, 1660 |
| Kui / Beri | A narrow well beside a talab, filled by seepage | 10 to 12 m deep, mouth covered with wooden planks. In the 1987 drought, when the talabs dried, the beris still held water |
| Talab | A pond collecting rainwater, usually with a well beside it | Maintained by the community, not by an owner |
TextbookSource: Rajasthan Adhyayan, Class 10, chapter 3, read directly. The structures, their dimensions and the historical attributions are the textbook's own. No Government of Rajasthan document giving the same eight-way classification with these details was located, so this table rests on the textbook.
The single cleanest distinction on this page is ownership.
A well (kuan) belonged to one person or one family. A baori was built for religious merit and belonged to everyone.
That is a social fact, not an engineering one, and it is the kind of distinction a Mains answer on traditional water management is looking for.
The second cleanest is jhalara. A jhalara has no catchment of its own and its water was never for drinking. Both halves are unusual, and either can carry a question.
How a khadin actually works
Worth understanding rather than memorising, because the mechanism explains the facts.
Water runs off a slope and is stopped by an embankment — the khadin bandh. Earthen embankments on two sides, a stone spillway on the third, so that excess water spills over the top rather than bursting the bund; deeper khadins have a gate to release it. The embankment is usually 2 to 4 metres high and the catchment runs 5 to 7 kilometres. Surplus water passes on into the next khadin.
Three consequences follow, and each is a separate mark.
The runoff carries fertile silt in with it, so yields are good. Livestock graze the catchment and their dung manures the soil. A well is dug in the slope below the khadin, into which water seeps from above, and that well supplies drinking water.
When the water dries, the crop is sown into the residual moisture — and in the desert that crop is wheat. Growing wheat in Jaisalmer without irrigation is the whole point of the technique, and it is the example to use for turning barren land to cultivation.
The textbook's own criticism should be carried too, because it is unusually candid: the new khadins built to a government plan are of poor quality, cannot take heavy rain, and crack.
3. The vocabulary, which is where the marks are
These eight words are set as match-the-following. Learn them as definitions, not as a list.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Agor (also Paytan) | The catchment — the ground around a nadi or talab, compacted so rainwater runs into it |
| Palar Pani | Rainwater collected in a nadi or tanka |
| Nehta (also Neshta) | The channel that drains the excess from a full nadi or talab into the next one, or into a field |
| Madar | The boundary of the catchment — the limit of the land from which water flows in. Defecation and urination were forbidden inside it |
| Indu | The mouth of a tanka, kept covered with a mesh so rubbish cannot enter |
| Dhekli | The lever above a tanka used to draw water up |
| Beri | A small well (kuiya), mostly in western Rajasthan |
| Vapika, Vapi, Karkandhu, Shakandhu | Older names for a baori |
TextbookSource: Rajasthan Adhyayan, Class 10, chapter 3, which sets these out as a glossary of rainwater-harvesting terminology. The chapter also states that the tradition of digging such stepwells was brought into western Rajasthan by the Shaka people around the first century CE, and that baoris built in 700–800 CE still stand at Jodhpur and Bhinmal.
Madar is the one to understand rather than memorise. It is a catchment boundary enforced as a rule of ritual purity. A community that cannot police a watershed by law polices it by taboo, and the result is the same: the catchment stays clean because the water below depends on it. If a Mains answer needs one example of traditional resource governance, madar is better than any of the structures.
The same idea, under other names
| State | Structure |
|---|---|
| Rajasthan | Khadin, kund, nadi |
| Maharashtra | Bandhara, taal |
| Himachal Pradesh | Kuhl |
| Tamil Nadu | Eri |
| Kerala | Surangam |
| Jammu region | Pokhar |
| Karnataka | Katta |
TextbookSource: Rajasthan Adhyayan, Class 10, chapter 3. This is a standard match-the-following set and appears in general studies papers well beyond Rajasthan.
4. Irrigation as it stands now
Everything in this section is from the Government of Rajasthan's current Economic Review, and it is where the numbers live.
| 2025-26 | |
|---|---|
| Total area under created irrigation | 40.19 lakh hectares |
| Additional potential created, up to December | 23,320 hectares |
| Expenditure, up to December (excluding IGNP) | ₹2,765.05 crore against a provision of ₹6,028.74 crore |
| Projects under way | 6 major · 5 medium · 34 minor |
GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Economic Review 2025-26, "Water Security and Resilience". Figures marked "up to December" are nine-month positions and are not full-year results.
The six major projects are Narmada Canal, Parwan, Dholpur Lift, Upper High Level Canal (Mahi), Pipalkhunt High Level Canal and Kaliteer Lift. The five medium are Garadada, Takli, Gagrin, Hatiyadeh and Andheri.
Irrigation in Rajasthan is by canals, tube wells, open wells, ponds and other sources, and the major systems are the Indira Gandhi Nahar, Mahi, Narmada Canal, Bisalpur and the Chambal Command Area.
How Rajasthan is actually irrigated
The 40.19 lakh hectares above is created potential. It says nothing about where the water in a Rajasthan field actually comes from, and the answer is counter-intuitive enough that RPSC sets it repeatedly: not canals.
| Source | Net irrigated area, 2024-25 (ha) | Share | Gross irrigated area, 2024-25 (ha) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wells and tube wells | 73,70,909 | 74.25% | 93,91,723 | 69.76% |
| Canals | 22,62,653 | 22.79% | 37,64,970 | 27.97% |
| Other sources | 2,34,593 | 2.36% | 2,44,991 | 1.82% |
| Ponds | 59,525 | 0.60% | 61,088 | 0.45% |
| Total | 99,27,680 | 1,34,62,772 |
GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Statistical Appendix table 28 (Net Irrigated Area by Sources) and table 27 (Gross Irrigated Area by Sources), both for 2024-25, marked Final. The Review publishes hectares only; the percentage columns are arithmetic on its figures, not published shares.
Learn the pair, not one of them. Net irrigated area counts each hectare once however many times it is watered. Gross counts it once per crop season. Canals gain five percentage points between the two and wells lose four and a half, and the reason is the whole argument: a canal command grows more than one irrigated crop a year, and a tube well is often serving a single one. Gross exceeds net by a factor of about 1.36 across the state, which is Rajasthan's irrigated cropping intensity in one number.
The examinable line is the first row. Wells and tube wells irrigate roughly three-quarters of the state's net irrigated area and about seven-tenths of the gross, in the state that also runs India's longest canal. Every groundwater programme on this page exists because of that ratio, and it is the honest counterweight to an answer that treats IGNP as the state's irrigation story.
What makes a project major, medium or minor
The counts in the table above are not a description of size, they are a classification with thresholds, and the thresholds are set centrally.
| Class | Culturable Command Area |
|---|---|
| Major | More than 10,000 hectares |
| Medium | Up to 10,000 and more than 2,000 hectares |
| Minor | Up to 2,000 hectares |
GovtSource: Central Water Commission, Project Appraisal, which defines "Major Irrigation (CCA more than 10,000 ha) and Multipurpose projects" and "medium irrigation projects (CCA upto 10,000 ha and more than 2,000 ha)", and routes the two classes to different offices. Minor irrigation is the residual class below 2,000 hectares.
The routing is the part worth remembering. A major project is appraised at CWC headquarters, with CSMRS, CGWB, GSI and CEA involved, and then goes to the Advisory Committee chaired by the Secretary, Department of Water Resources. A medium project is cleared in a regional field office. That is why a major project's dates slip by years and a medium project's do not, and it is a better explanation of delay in an answer than any general remark about capacity.
Each of the eleven named projects has a location, and the pairs are ready-made match-the-following.
| Project | Class | Where it is, and what it does |
|---|---|---|
| Narmada Canal | Major | Jalore and Barmer; 2.46 lakh ha, 233 villages |
| Parwan | Major | On the Parwan river, Jhalawar; command in Jhalawar, Baran and Kota, 2.01 lakh ha CCA in 571 villages, drinking water to 1,402 villages |
| Dholpur Lift | Major | Dholpur, about 39,980 ha CCA, mandatory micro-irrigation, a 30 MW solar plant for its own power |
| Upper High Level Canal (Mahi) | Major | Banswara; 41,903 ha in 338 villages, through a 105 km main canal from saddle dam no. 1 of the Mahi project |
| Pipalkhunt High Level Canal | Major | Pipalkhunt tehsil; 5,127 ha in 24 villages, with 3.72 TMC diverted from the right end of the Mahi dam to the Jakham dam |
| Kaliteer Lift | Major | Dholpur; 98.60 MCM lifted from the Chambal near Kaliteer village, Sarmathura tehsil, in the monsoon, for 483 villages and 3 towns |
| Gardada | Medium | Holaspura village, Bundi, on the Mangli Dungri river and Ganesh Nala; 9,161 ha in 44 villages |
| Takli | Medium | Dhakia village, Ramganjmandi and Chechat tehsils, Kota, on the Takli river; 7,800 ha in 33 villages |
| Gagarin | Medium | Kalapipal (Devgarh), Pidawa and Pachpahar tehsil, Jhalawar, on the Ahu river; 9,999.83 ha in 32 villages |
| Hathiadeh | Medium | Karwari Khurd village, Kishanganj tehsil, Baran; 8,979 ha in 49 villages |
| Andheri | Medium | Mundkiya village, Chhabra tehsil, Baran, on the Andheri river; command 11,887 ha, irrigation proposed on 9,850 ha |
GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, "Water Security and Resilience", project by project. Note the spellings. The Review's summary paragraph writes Garadada, Gagrin, Hatiyadeh; its own project sections write Gardada, Gagarin, Hathiadeh. The same document spells them two ways, so recognise the name rather than the transliteration.
Two of the eleven are already keyed by RPSC, and both keys sit on the PYQ page. Parwan's beneficiary districts are Jhalawar, Baran and Kota (RAS 2021 Prelims), which the Review confirms word for word, and the Narmada canal's are Jalore and Barmer (RAS 2018 Prelims). Where the commission's own key and the state's current Review agree, the pair is as safe as anything in this chapter gets.
The dams themselves, on the national register
The state's big reservoirs are examined as lakes and built as dams, and the two identities carry different data. The Central Water Commission's register is the place to settle height, length, storage, year and purpose, because it is the originating authority and every entry carries its own dam code.
| Dam | District | River (basin) | Completed | Height (m) | Length (m) | Gross storage (MCM) | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jakham Main Dam | Pratapgarh | Jakham (Mahi) | 2000 | 82 | 253 | 142 | Irrigation |
| Mahi Bajaj Sagar | Banswara | Mahi (Mahi) | 1985 | 74.5 | 3,109 | 2,180.41 | Multipurpose |
| Rana Pratap Sagar | Chittaurgarh | Chambal (Ganga) | 1970 | 53.95 | 1,143 | 2,904.85 | Multipurpose |
| Jawai | Pali | Jawai (Luni) | 1957 | 50.59 | 227.38 | 207.49 | Irrigation |
| Jawahar Sagar | Bundi | Chambal (Ganga) | 1972 | 44.8 | 219.46 | 67.11 | Hydro only |
| Navnera Barrage | Kota | Kali Sindh (Ganga) | still "under construction" in the 2025 register | 44 | 1,586.48 | 226.65 | not stated |
| Bisalpur | Tonk | Banas (Ganga) | 1999 | 39.5 | 574 | 1,095.85 | Irrigation |
| Parwan | Jhalawar | Parwan (Ganga) | under construction | 38 | 392.7 | 490 | Multipurpose |
| Kota Barrage | Kota | Chambal (Ganga) | 1960 | 37.35 | 551.68 | 112.05 | Irrigation |
| Panchana | Karauli | Panchai (Ganga) | 2005 | 34.08 | 1,040 | not quoted — see note | Irrigation |
| Jai Samand | Udaipur in the register; Salumber on the current map | Gomti (Mahi) | 1730 | 34.9 | 335 | 415.25 | Irrigation |
| Parbati Dam | Dhaulpur | Sairni (Ganga) | 1963 | 27.24 | 7,985.76 | 120.9 | Irrigation |
GovtSource: Central Water Commission and the National Dam Safety Authority, National Register of Specified Dams 2025, Rajasthan section (printed pages 445 onwards), downloaded and parsed in full. Every figure above is read from that register's own columns, including the district column, which is used as printed. The register gives Rajasthan 315 dams — 312 completed and 3 under construction — with a gross storage of 12.039 BCM and a live storage of 9.659 BCM. Basin names are the register's, which is why the Chambal dams sit in the Ganga basin and Jawai in the Luni system. "Multipurpose", "Irrig." and "Hydro." are the register's own purpose codes. One storage figure is deliberately left blank. The register's gross-storage entry for Panchana reads 1.572, which is implausibly small for a dam 34 m high and 1,040 m long and is more likely a unit or typesetting fault in the register than a reservoir of that size. A figure that cannot be read with confidence is not printed here, and the rest of the row, which is consistent with every other source, is.
Five things in that table are worth isolating, and three of them contradict what is taught.
Jakham is the state's tallest dam and nothing is close except Mahi Bajaj Sagar. All 315 Rajasthan entries were sorted by height: Jakham stands first at 82 metres, Mahi Bajaj Sagar second at 74.5, and the third, Rana Pratap Sagar, is twenty metres below that. The figure in wide circulation for Jakham is 81 metres. The register says 82, and the register is the issuing authority.
The largest reservoir is not behind the tallest dam. Rana Pratap Sagar holds 2,904.85 MCM, the most in Rajasthan, ahead of Mahi Bajaj Sagar's 2,180.41 and Bisalpur's 1,095.85. Jakham, the tallest, holds 142. Height is about the valley, storage is about the catchment, and the two superlatives belong to different dams on different rivers.
Mahi Bajaj Sagar is not the longest dam in Rajasthan, and it is not close either. It is called the state's longest almost everywhere, including on the Government of India's own tourism portal, on a figure of 3,019 metres. The register gives it 3,109 metres — the two are a digit apart and the wrong one has travelled further — and it sorts twenty-ninth of 315 by length. Twenty-eight Rajasthan dams are longer, led by Parbati Dam in Dhaulpur district at 7,985.76 metres, with Hathiadeh in Baran at 6,748 m, Ummed Sagar in Baran at 6,492 m and Galwa in Tonk at 6,068 m behind it.
Understand why the wrong answer is so durable, because that is what makes it safe to handle. The dams that beat Mahi Bajaj Sagar on length are long, low earthen embankments across shallow ground — Parbati is 27 metres high and eight kilometres long; Ummed Sagar is 13 metres high and six and a half kilometres long. They are enormous in one dimension and unremarkable in every other, so nobody puts them on a list of great dams. Mahi Bajaj Sagar is the longest of the state's tall dams, and that is the true statement underneath the false one.
How to answer it. If the option set contains Mahi Bajaj Sagar and no Parbati, the examiner is testing the received answer and Mahi Bajaj Sagar is what the key will say. If Parbati appears as an option, the question has been set from the register and Parbati is the answer. What is defensible in a written answer is the precise form: Mahi Bajaj Sagar is Rajasthan's largest dam and the longest of its major dams; the longest dam on the national register is Parbati.
Jawahar Sagar's purpose code is H alone. It is a power station, not an irrigation dam, which is the mechanical reason behind the pick-up-dam description, and a clean distinction from Rana Pratap Sagar upstream, which the register codes multipurpose.
And one entry disagrees with the state. Navnera Barrage was inaugurated by the Prime Minister on 17 December 2024 and the Economic Review 2025-26 records it as complete. The Central Water Commission's 2025 register still lists it as under construction. Registers lag inaugurations, and where two government records differ on whether a structure is finished, both are worth carrying with their dates rather than choosing between them.
Indira Gandhi Nahar Project
Called the lifeline of western Rajasthan, and the idea is worth stating plainly: Himalayan water carried into the Thar.
| Culturable Command Area irrigated | 16.17 lakh hectares |
| Land allotted since inception | 14.82 lakh hectares |
| Budget, 2025-26 | ₹1,106.36 crore (Stage I Kanwarsain lift ₹78.04 cr; Stage II ₹1,028.32 cr) |
| Sprinkler system in Stage-II lifts | 0.27 lakh ha pilot, then 1.99 lakh ha (2016 to 2023-24), and 1.11 lakh ha more allotted in 2025-26 |
GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26. Named components to know: the Kanwarsain Lift (Stage I), the Pannalal Barupal Lift Canal, the Sagar Mal Gopa Shakha, and the Choudhary Kumbha Ram Arya Lift Scheme, under which six new canals are being built.
Note the objectives the state states for it, because they are broader than irrigation: drought proofing, improvement of the environment and afforestation, employment generation and rehabilitation. A canal described by its own department as an environmental and resettlement project is making a claim worth examining in a Mains answer.
Where the canal's water comes from
This chapter has so far described IGNP without saying by what right its water reaches Rajasthan, and the answer is a chain of instruments that runs straight into a Mains answer on inter-state rivers.
| Step | What happened |
|---|---|
| Before partition | 3.13 MAF of the Ravi-Beas was already in use by Rajasthan, the then Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. The surplus above that is what everything since has divided |
| January 1955 | Surplus Ravi-Beas waters allocated at a conference of Chief Ministers |
| 24 March 1976 | Reallocated by Government of India notification, after the reorganisation of Punjab in November 1966 |
| 31 December 1981 | Agreement among the Chief Ministers of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan |
| 24 July 1985 | Punjab Memorandum of Settlement, the Rajiv-Longowal Accord, whose para 9.0 governs the sharing of river waters |
| April 1986 | Ravi and Beas Waters Tribunal constituted, three members, under the amended Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956. Report 30 January 1987 |
| 12 July 2004 | Punjab enacts the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, terminating the 1981 agreement. Presidential Reference made 22 July 2004 |
| 10 November 2016 | The Supreme Court answers the Reference, opining that the 2004 Act cannot be said to be in accordance with the Constitution. The matter remains sub judice |
GovtSource: Ministry of Jal Shakti, Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, note on the Ravi and Beas Waters Tribunal. The MAF split among the three states under the 1981 agreement is not stated in this document and is not asserted here. The Accord's para 9.1 protects existing utilisation as on 1 July 1985, which is the clause that keeps water flowing into Rajasthan while the litigation continues.
Say the awkward part in an answer, because it is the strongest thing here. Rajasthan's northern canal system runs on an agreement that one signatory has legislated to terminate, over which the Supreme Court has given an opinion, and the litigation is still live. The canal is not disputed. The entitlement behind it is.
Three canal systems share that water, and the state's Review names all three. The Firozpur feeder is the common feeder of the Gang Nahar and the Bhakra system in Rajasthan. Its design capacity is 11,192 cusecs and it has fallen to about 9,500 for want of maintenance, which is why its DPR was cleared by the Central Water Commission's 158th Advisory Committee on 24 April 2025 at ₹647.62 crore, shared Punjab ₹379.12 crore (58.54%) and Rajasthan ₹268.50 crore (41.46%). Relining it will benefit 3.14 lakh hectares of the Gang canal system and 2.92 lakh hectares of the Bhakra system. Those two figures are the size of the two older canal commands, and they are the answer to how much of northern Rajasthan is not IGNP.
Gang Canal Project Phase-II is one of the 99 priority Command Area Development and Water Management projects under PMKSY, building lined watercourses across 1,17,975 hectares at ₹341.53 crore, of which 6,907 hectares were completed up to December 2025. Siddhmukh appears in the Review too, as the Siddhmukh-Nohar Irrigation Project, one of the schemes in Sri Ganganagar, Bikaner and Hanumangarh under which lined watercourses were built or renovated across 48,712 hectares in 2025-26 against a target of 57,200. RPSC has keyed Sidhmukh's beneficiary districts as Hanumangarh and Churu (RAS 2018 Prelims), and that key is worked on the PYQ page.
GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, "Water Security and Resilience", on the Firozpur feeder, the Rajasthan and Sirhind feeder relining, and the CADWM works. Figures "up to December" are nine-month positions.
Narmada Canal Project
One fact here is a certain question.
It is the first major irrigation project in India in which sprinkler irrigation was made mandatory across the entire command area.
| Command area | 2.46 lakh hectares, 233 villages |
| Districts | Jalore and Barmer |
| Drinking water | 37.48 lakh people in 1,541 villages (874 in Jalore, 667 in Barmer) |
| Towns served | Jalore, Bhinmal and Sanchor |
GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26.
The entitlement behind that canal is small and exactly fixed. The Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal was constituted on 6 October 1969 under Justice V. Ramaswami, gave its award on 7 December 1979, and the award was notified by the Government of India on 12 December 1979, at which point it became final and binding. It divided 28.00 MAF of utilisable water at 75 per cent dependability.
| State | Share |
|---|---|
| Madhya Pradesh | 18.25 MAF |
| Gujarat | 9.00 MAF |
| Rajasthan | 0.50 MAF |
| Maharashtra | 0.25 MAF |
| Total | 28.00 MAF |
GovtSource: Ministry of Jal Shakti, Department of Water Resources, Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal (October, 1969). Madhya Pradesh's share is 18.25 MAF, not 18, which is the rounding most notes carry.
Two details from the same award are worth holding. The tribunal fixed the Sardar Sarovar dam's Full Reservoir Level at 138.68 m (455 ft), and clause 16 of its final orders makes the state shares, the reservoir level and the canal's full supply level reviewable at any time after 45 years from the award's publication in the gazette. The award was gazetted on 12 December 1979, so that window opened in December 2024. Rajasthan draws the smallest of the four shares, from a river that does not touch it, under an award that has only just become open to review. That sentence is worth more in a Mains answer than the command-area figures alone.
The Yamuna water agreement
| Agreement | May 1994, through the Upper Yamuna River Board |
| Allocation to Rajasthan | 1,917 cusecs, or 577 MCM a year |
| Point of allocation | Tajewala Head (Hathnikund Barrage) |
| Season | Monsoon only — July to October |
| MoU with Haryana | 17 February 2024, for a joint DPR to carry the water underground to Sikar, Churu and Jhunjhunu |
GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26.
The seasonal restriction is the examinable part. Rajasthan's Yamuna share is a monsoon share, available July to October only, which is why the 2024 MoU is about an underground carrier — water that arrives in four months has to be stored or moved, not simply used.
What the monsoon share is waiting on
The Government of India's own record of the February 2024 MoU is more precise than the Review's summary, and the precision matters.
The allocation itself dates from an MoU of 12 May 1994, not merely "May 1994". The instruction to prepare a DPR came from the Upper Yamuna Review Committee at its 7th meeting on 15 February 2018, and at that stage the scheme was for Jhunjhunu and Churu alone; Sikar was added later. And Rajasthan's 577 MCM in Phase 1 is not a first call on the river. It becomes available only after Haryana has used the full 24,000-cusec capacity of the Western Yamuna Canal, including Delhi's share, at Hathnikund. A conditional monsoon share, fourth in line, is what the underground pipeline is being built to carry.
The rest of the year is contingent on three dams that are not Rajasthan's. The MoU's second clause states that after the construction of three identified storages in the Upper Yamuna basin, Renukaji, Lakhwar and Kishau, Rajasthan's corresponding share at Hathnikund "during rest of the period" will be conveyed through the same system for drinking water and irrigation.
| Storage | River | Where | Instrument, and its date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lakhwar | Yamuna | Uttarakhand | Cost-and-benefit agreement signed by six Chief Ministers, 28 August 2018 |
| Renukaji | Giri, a Yamuna tributary | Sirmour district, Himachal Pradesh | MoU signed by six Chief Ministers, 11 January 2019. A 148 m rock-fill dam supplying 23 cumec to Delhi |
| Kishau | Tons | Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh | No signed agreement located. As of January 2019 the Union minister described a consensus as developed and an agreement as still to come |
GovtSources: Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Union Minister of Jal Shakti holds discussions with the CMs of Haryana and Rajasthan regarding utilisation of Rajasthan's share of Yamuna water, 17 February 2024; Six States to Sign Agreement for Renukaji Multipurpose Dam Project Tomorrow, 10 January 2019; and MoU signed for Renukaji Multipurpose Dam Project among Six States, 11 January 2019, which records the signing itself. The six states in both agreements are Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand. All three storages were declared National Projects in 2008, with 90 per cent central funding of the irrigation and drinking-water component and 10 per cent from the beneficiary states.
That table closes the argument this chapter opens. Water arriving in four months has to be stored, and the storage is upstream in Himachal and Uttarakhand, not in Rajasthan. Two of the three have signed agreements and none of the three is built. Rajasthan's year-round Yamuna share therefore depends on dams in two other states, one of which has not been agreed at all, and saying that with the dates is worth more than repeating the 1,917 cusecs.
5. Nowadays — what changed in 2026
Covering 1 January to 23 August 2026, with the decisions immediately behind it. Updated every month until Prelims and Mains.
The PKC-ERCP link is the biggest water story in the state
The Modified Parbati-Kalisindh-Chambal Link Project, integrated with the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project.
| What it does | Diverts surplus monsoon water from the Chambal's tributary basins — Kunnu, Kul, Parvati, Kalisindh and Mej — into the Banas, Morel, Banganga, Parbati, Kalisil and Gambhir basins |
| MoU | 28 January 2024, between the Government of India, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, for preparation of the DPR |
| Rajasthan's DPR | ₹89,644 crore, submitted to the Central Water Commission on 29 July 2025 |
| Districts served | 17, in eastern Rajasthan, for drinking and industrial water |
| Irrigation | 2.21 lakh ha additional potential and 1.52 lakh ha restored, by sprinkler (micro) irrigation; a further 30,000 ha from treated wastewater |
| Completed | Navnera Barrage and Isarda Dam |
| Under way | ₹9,416.70 crore across three packages — Ramgarh Barrage, Mahalpur Barrage, Navnera Pump House, the Chambal aqueduct, and the feeder from Navnera to Mej to Galwa to Bisalpur and Isarda |
| Allocated | ₹13,895 crore in Letters of Allocation, including the Mor Sagar artificial reservoir at Ajmer and feeders to Ramgarh Dam (Jaipur), Jaisamand (Alwar) and Bandh Baretha (Bharatpur) |
GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, "Major River Basin and Inter State Projects". Navnera and Isarda are recorded there as completed; everything else is under construction, allocated or surveyed. Do not write the project as delivering water — the DPR for the Rajasthan portion was submitted in July 2025 and the link is being built.
Read the structure of the project, not just its size. It is a monsoon-surplus transfer: water that would otherwise run out of the Chambal system in four months is moved into the basins of eastern Rajasthan, where it is stored. That is why it is a link project rather than a dam, and why it needs three governments to agree.
The name, the two instruments, and the two irrigation figures
A paper that asks about the "Ram Jal Setu Link Project" is asking about the project above, and this chapter has not until now carried the name. The Government of Rajasthan's own Budget Speech for 2025-26 uses it twice, in the opening review of the government's first year and again in the irrigation section, in the form "राम जल सेतु लिंक परियोजना (संशोधित PKC-ERCP)", the Ram Jal Setu Link Project (Modified PKC-ERCP). The state writes it as three words, Ram Jal Setu, though Ramjal Setu is common in reporting.
The Economic Review 2025-26 does not use the name at all, and calls the scheme only the Modified Parbati-Kalisindh-Chambal Link Project. Two current Government of Rajasthan documents, one naming it and one not, is exactly the situation in which an option can be built either way. Learn both labels as the same project.
There are two instruments, not one, and RPSC can key either date.
| Instrument | Date | Parties | What it did |
|---|---|---|---|
| Memorandum of Understanding | 28 January 2024 | Government of India, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh | Preparation of the DPR |
| Memorandum of Agreement | 5 December 2024 | Government of India, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh | The agreement itself, publicly declared by the Prime Minister at Jaipur on 17 December 2024 |
GovtSources: Press Information Bureau, Year End Review 2024, Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Ministry of Jal Shakti, which records both instruments and their dates; Prime Minister's Office, PM participates in 'Ek Varsh-Parinaam Utkarsh', 17 December 2024, the record of the event; and Government of Rajasthan, Finance Department, Budget Speech 2025-26, paragraphs 3 and 101, for the name.
The Modified PKC is one of five links the Government of India has identified as priority links under the Inter-Linking of Rivers programme, alongside the Ken-Betwa link and the three link systems of the Godavari-Cauvery. Ken-Betwa is the first ILR project on which implementation was begun; the Modified PKC is the second to reach a signed agreement. That ordering is a likely question in itself.
And the Economic Review gives two different irrigation figures for the project, in the same edition. Its overview chapter and the opening paragraph of its water chapter both say the scheme will "add 2.51 lakh hectares of new irrigation area". A later paragraph in the same chapter says "2.21 lakh hectares of additional irrigation potential will be created". Both carry the same 1.52 lakh hectares of restored area and the same 30,000 hectares from treated wastewater. The state's own current document does not reconcile them, and neither does this page. Carry 2.21 and 2.51 as the two figures in the Review, note that the difference is 30,000 hectares and that 30,000 hectares of treated-wastewater potential is separately stated, and do not present either as the settled number.
One physical fact is worth adding from the dam register. Navnera Barrage stands on the Kalisindh in Kota, is 44 metres high and 1,586.48 metres long, and was still listed as under construction in the Central Water Commission's 2023 register. The Economic Review 2025-26 records it and Isarda Dam as complete, and the Prime Minister inaugurated Navnera on 17 December 2024. The chronology is consistent, and this is the only part of the project that has moved from paper to water.
Water conservation, and the return of the traditional structures
The state's flagship water programme is explicitly about restoring the structures in section 2.
Mukhyamantri Jal Swavlamban Abhiyan (MJSA) 2.0 promotes rainwater harvesting, afforestation and traditional water body restoration. Its first phase covers over 5,000 villages.
The Budget 2026-27, presented 11 February 2026, funded a third phase: 1.10 lakh water-harvesting structures across about 5,000 villages, at ₹2,500 crore.
GovtSources: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26; and Finance Department, Press Note — Budget 2026-27, 11 February 2026, Ninth Pillar. The ₹2,500 crore is a budget provision, not completed work.
This is the connection to make in an answer. The techniques in section 2 are not heritage; they are current policy. A state building 1.10 lakh water-harvesting structures is doing at scale what the khadin and the nadi did locally, and the Budget line is the evidence that the traditional system is being treated as infrastructure rather than as folklore.
Also announced in the same budget: a Bureau of Water Use Efficiency, a Rajasthan State Water Policy, and more than ₹11,300 crore for irrigation works.
MJSA 2.0 in full, because the phases are dated
This page has given MJSA's first phase as "over 5,000 villages". The Review sets out all four, with completion dates, and the Budget's third phase is the third row.
| Phase | Villages to be selected | Completion date |
|---|---|---|
| First | 5,135 | 31 March 2026 |
| Second | 4,746 | 30 June 2026 |
| Third | 5,000 | 30 June 2027 |
| Fourth | 5,119 | 30 June 2028 |
| Total | 20,000 villages over four years |
GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, table 8.1. MJSA 2.0 was launched in February 2024. These are dates for selection and for completion of structures, not results. The structures built under it are anicuts, farm ponds, mini percolation tanks, mini storage tanks, sub-surface barriers and minor irrigation tanks, together with repair of old minor irrigation tanks, ponds and anicuts.
Note what that list of structures is not. The state's flagship harvesting programme is written in modern engineering vocabulary and does not use a single one of the eight traditional names in section 2. The techniques are continuous; the nomenclature is not. An answer claiming that MJSA is rebuilding khadins and nadis goes further than the document does. What the document says is that traditional water bodies are being restored and repaired, which is a different and more modest claim.
Two dam figures belong in the same window. The Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project covers 189 of Rajasthan's 212 large dams, with rehabilitation sanctioned at 15 dams worth ₹516.55 crore and work completed at 7 as of December 2025. The 212 is the count in the Central Water Commission's 2019 register. The same commission's 2025 register puts Rajasthan at 315 specified dams — 312 completed and 3 under construction — with a gross storage of 12.039 BCM. Both numbers are the Commission's own and they differ because they are different editions, so name the edition whenever the count is used, and note that a DRIP coverage figure quoted against the older count overstates the share covered.
GovtSources: Economic Review 2025-26, figure 8.5, for the DRIP figures; and Central Water Commission, National Register of Specified Dams 2025, statewise summary of dams and corresponding storage, read directly.
What has not changed
The traditional structures and their vocabulary do not move, which is why section 2 and section 3 need no freshness check. The lake-to-district map does not move either — but the district framework beneath it has, and the textbook list is on the pre-2023 map of 33 districts.
No new statewide irrigation total has been published for a full 2025-26. 40.19 lakh hectares is the created-area figure in the current Review, and the additional potential of 23,320 hectares is a nine-month figure.
What RPSC has actually asked
1. Choose the incorrect pair : Water body — Location (district) RAS 2013 Prelims, Q148 · Lakes and water bodies by district
Show answer
RPSC key: (c) Ghadsisar – Bikaner
Gadsisar is in Jaisalmer, not Bikaner. The other three are sound: Kaylana at Jodhpur (built 1872), Chand Baori at Abhaneri in Dausa, beside the Harshat Mata temple, and Gap (Gaib) Sagar at Dungarpur.
All four pairs appear in the district table in section 1 above, and all four were confirmed against it independently. This is the most repeated water-body trap in the papers — if you learn one pair from this chapter, learn Gadsisar–Jaisalmer.
The rest of the rivers, lakes and water questions are worked in full on the Geography of Rajasthan PYQ page, under Rivers, lakes and water.
Revision notes
The framing. Rajasthan is India's largest state by area, 8th by population; ~5.5% of India's people, ~1% of its available water.
Lake traps. GADSISAR = JAISALMER, not Bikaner (RPSC 2013). Jaisamand = SALUMBER on the current map (Udaipur pre-2023); Alwar has Jai Sagar, a different body. Ummed Sagar and Pratap Sagar appear under BOTH Jodhpur and Jaisalmer — a name alone is not an answer. Kaylana = Jodhpur (1872). Gaib/Gap Sagar = Dungarpur. Chand Baori = Abhaneri, Dausa.
Salt lakes. Sambhar (Jaipur) · Didwana (Didwana-Kuchaman) · Lunkaransar (Bikaner) · Pachpadra (Balotra) — saline because the Nagaur uplands drain inland. Sambhar is a Ramsar site.
Others to fix. Ajmer Anasagar, Foy Sagar, Pushkar · Udaipur Fateh Sagar, Pichola, Udaisagar, Swaroop Sagar (Jaisamand is Salumber's now) · Kota Jawahar Sagar · Chittorgarh Rana Pratap Sagar · Churu Tal Chhapar · Tonk Bisalpur · Sirohi Nakki · Rajsamand Rajsamand · Banswara Mahi Bajaj Sagar.
Eight structures. KHADIN — Paliwal Brahmins of Jaisalmer, 15th century; ~500 khadins irrigate 1,300 ha; pal 2-4 m, catchment 5-7 km; wheat on residual moisture; Iraq adopted it. TANKA/KUND — covered underground, for DRINKING, because groundwater is saline; 30-40 ft deep. NADI — first by Rao Jodhaji, 1520; 3-12 m deep, water 10 months (12 in alluvium). TOBA — deeper than a nadi, ~20 families. BAORI — stepwell, PUBLIC by design; Chand Baori + Harshat Mata temple. JHALARA — NO catchment of its own, fed by seepage, NOT for drinking; Jodhpur Mahamandir Jhalara 1660. KUI/BERI — 10-12 m, wooden plank cover; held water in the 1987 drought. TALAB — community-maintained.
The ownership line. A well (kuan) = one family. A baori = everyone, built for religious merit.
Vocabulary. AGOR/PAYTAN = the catchment · PALAR PANI = rainwater stored · NEHTA = the overflow drain · MADAR = catchment boundary, fouling forbidden inside · INDU = the tanka's mesh-covered mouth · DHEKLI = the lifting lever · baori also vapika, vapi, karkandhu, shakandhu.
Other states. Maharashtra bandhara/taal · Himachal kuhl · Tamil Nadu eri · Kerala surangam · Jammu pokhar · Karnataka katta.
Irrigation now (Economic Review 2025-26). Created area 40.19 lakh ha; 6 major + 5 medium + 34 minor projects. IGNP — CCA 16.17 lakh ha, land allotted since inception 14.82 lakh ha, budget ₹1,106.36 crore; components Kanwarsain Lift, Pannalal Barupal, Sagar Mal Gopa, Choudhary Kumbha Ram Arya Lift. NARMADA CANAL — India's FIRST major project with sprinkler MANDATORY across the whole command area; 2.46 lakh ha, 233 villages, Jalore and Barmer; towns Jalore, Bhinmal, Sanchor.
Yamuna. May 1994 agreement, Upper Yamuna River Board: 1,917 cusecs / 577 MCM at Tajewala Head (Hathnikund Barrage), MONSOON ONLY (Jul-Oct). MoU with Haryana 17 Feb 2024 — underground carrier to Sikar, Churu, Jhunjhunu.
PKC-ERCP. Diverts Kunnu, Kul, Parvati, Kalisindh, Mej surplus into Banas, Morel, Banganga, Parbati, Kalisil, Gambhir. MoU 28 Jan 2024 (GoI + Rajasthan + MP). DPR ₹89,644 crore submitted to CWC 29 Jul 2025. 17 districts. Navnera Barrage and Isarda Dam COMPLETE; the rest under construction. 2.21 lakh ha new + 1.52 lakh ha restored.
MJSA 2.0 — rainwater harvesting, afforestation, traditional water body restoration; phase 1 over 5,000 villages; Budget 2026-27 third phase: 1.10 lakh structures, ~5,000 villages, ₹2,500 crore.
District note. JAISAMAND = UDAIPUR is still the answer to give. The sanctuary spans Girwa (Udaipur district) plus Sarada and Salumbar (Salumber district), so it sits in both; the dam register, the lake lists and the sanctuary listing all say Udaipur.
How the state is really irrigated (Economic Review 2025-26, 2024-25 Final). Net irrigated area 99,27,680 ha; gross 1,34,62,772 ha. NET: wells and tube wells 74.25%, canals 22.79%, other 2.36%, ponds 0.60%. GROSS: wells and tube wells 69.76%, canals 27.97%. Wells beat canals on both bases. Gross ÷ net ≈ 1.36.
Classification (CWC). Major = CCA over 10,000 ha · Medium = 2,000 to 10,000 ha · Minor = up to 2,000 ha. Majors are appraised at CWC headquarters, mediums in regional offices.
Project locations. Parwan Jhalawar (command Jhalawar + Baran + Kota, 571 villages) · Dholpur Lift and Kaliteer Lift Dholpur · Upper High Level Canal Banswara, 41,903 ha · Pipalkhunt Pipalkhunt tehsil, 5,127 ha · Gardada Bundi · Takli Kota · Gagarin Jhalawar · Hathiadeh and Andheri Baran.
Dams (CWC, National Register of Specified Dams 2025 — Rajasthan 315 dams, 312 complete). JAKHAM is the tallest at 82 m (2000, Pratapgarh); the circulated figure of 81 m is wrong. Mahi Bajaj Sagar 74.5 m — second tallest — 3,109 m long, 1985, multipurpose; NOT the longest: 28 entries are longer, led by Parbati Dam, Dhaulpur, 7,985.76 m (1963), then Hathiadeh 6,748 m and Ummed Sagar 6,492 m (both Baran) and Galwa 6,068 m (Tonk). Largest reservoir is RANA PRATAP SAGAR, 2,904.85 MCM (1970, 53.95 m, 1,143 m, Chittaurgarh), ahead of Mahi Bajaj Sagar 2,180.41 and Bisalpur 1,095.85. Jawahar Sagar 1972, Bundi, purpose HYDRO ONLY. Jawai 1957, Pali. Bisalpur 1999, Tonk. Navnera Barrage Kali Sindh, Kota, 44 m, 1,586.48 m — still "under construction" in the 2025 register though inaugurated 17 Dec 2024.
Ravi-Beas chain. Jan 1955 CM conference · GoI notification 24 Mar 1976 · CM agreement 31 Dec 1981 · Rajiv-Longowal Accord 24 Jul 1985 · Ravi and Beas Waters Tribunal Apr 1986, report 30 Jan 1987 · Punjab Termination of Agreements Act 12 Jul 2004 · Supreme Court opinion 10 Nov 2016; still sub judice. Firozpur feeder is the common feeder of the Gang Nahar and Bhakra systems; relining benefits Gang 3.14 lakh ha, Bhakra 2.92 lakh ha.
Narmada award. NWDT constituted 6 Oct 1969 (Justice V. Ramaswami) · award 7 Dec 1979, notified 12 Dec 1979 · MP 18.25 · Gujarat 9.00 · Rajasthan 0.50 · Maharashtra 0.25 = 28.00 MAF at 75% dependability · Sardar Sarovar FRL 138.68 m · shares reviewable after 45 years, so from Dec 2024.
Yamuna, the fine print. MoU 12 May 1994 · Upper Yamuna Review Committee's 7th meeting 15 Feb 2018 ordered the DPR · 577 MCM only after Haryana's full 24,000-cusec use of the Western Yamuna Canal including Delhi's share · year-round supply waits on Renukaji (Giri, HP, MoU 11 Jan 2019), Lakhwar (Yamuna, Uttarakhand, 28 Aug 2018) and Kishau (Tons, NO agreement on record); all three National Projects 2008, 90:10.
PKC-ERCP. Also the RAM JAL SETU LINK PROJECT (Budget Speech 2025-26; the Economic Review does not use the name). MoU 28 Jan 2024 for the DPR and MoA 5 Dec 2024 for the agreement, declared by the PM 17 Dec 2024. One of five priority ILR links, with Ken-Betwa and Godavari-Cauvery. The Review gives BOTH 2.51 and 2.21 lakh ha of new irrigation in the same edition.
Lakes policy. NLCP in Rajasthan: Mansagar (Jaipur, completed), Anasagar + Pushkar (Ajmer), Fateh Sagar + Pichola (Udaipur), ₹214.98 crore. NAKKI had in-principle approval only. NLCP and NWCP merged into NPCA on 7 Feb 2013, 70:30.
Sambhar's own file. Ramsar 23 Mar 1990, 24,000 ha, depth 0.5-2.0 m, four feeder streams; flamingos second only to the Rann of Kutch. The 1990 sheet wrongly places it in Jodhpur district. Rajasthan is the third-largest salt state after Gujarat and Tamil Nadu: 21.58 of India's 268.87 lakh tonnes, 2014-15. Siliserh (Alwar) is the fifth Ramsar site, 7 Jul 2025.
MJSA 2.0 phases. 5,135 (31.3.2026) · 4,746 (30.6.2026) · 5,000 (30.6.2027) · 5,119 (30.6.2028) = 20,000 villages. DRIP covers 189 of 212 large dams (the CWC's 2019 count); the CWC's 2025 register puts Rajasthan at 315 — 312 complete, 3 under construction, 12.039 BCM gross.
Aggregator Watch
Unresolved claims from this box are collected, with what was checked, on the Caution for Readers page.
Claims below circulate in coaching notes and aggregator sites for this topic. They are listed only where they are absent from this chapter or in conflict with it. None has been confirmed against a primary source by us. Carry them as "what the aggregators say" so an option does not surprise you, and do not build a Mains answer on them.
| Aggregator claim | Status here |
|---|---|
| IGNP's seven lift canals with districts and rankings: Chaudhary Kumbharam serving the most districts, Kanwar Sain the first and the longest, Veer Tejaji the smallest, plus Pannalal Barupal, Dr Karni Singh, Guru Jambheshwar and Jai Narain Vyas | Partly covered, and only the part RPSC has keyed. The Economic Review 2025-26 names Kanwarsain (Stage I), Pannalal Barupal, Sagar Mal Gopa and the Choudhary Kumbha Ram Arya lift scheme. RPSC's own 2013 key gives the west-to-east order Jai Narayan Vyas, Dr Karni Singh, Kanwarsen, Choudhary Kumbharam, and its 2016 key pairs Choudhary Kumbha Ram with Hanumangarh and Jhunjhunu; both are worked on the PYQ page. The seven-canal roster, the district lists and the first/longest/smallest markers were not traced to any government document |
| IGNP's institutional history: proposed 1948 by Kanwar Sain, foundation stone 31 March 1958 by Govind Ballabh Pant, canal inaugurated at Naurangdesar on 11 October 1961 by Dr S. Radhakrishnan, renamed 2 November 1984 | Not verified. The Rajasthan Water Resources Department's IGNP portal returns no readable content and the India-WRIS pages could not be reached while other government hosts answered normally. No date in this sequence is asserted on this page |
| IGNP's dimensions: total 649 km, main canal 445 km (Stage I 189, Stage II 256), feeder 204 km from Harike to Masitawali Head, 6,500 km of distributaries, designed on 7.59 of Rajasthan's 8.6 MAF | Not verified, for the same reason. The Review gives only the culturable command area of 16.17 lakh ha, which is what this page carries |
| The Chambal Valley Project: four dams in three phases, Rajasthan and MP 50:50, 386 MW total, 193 MW each, Gandhi Sagar 115 MW, Rana Pratap Sagar 172 MW, Jawahar Sagar 99 MW, Kota Barrage irrigation-only with 16 gates over 438 m, 14 lift canals | Structure not verified; parameters partly covered. NRLD 2023 is now in the body for Rana Pratap Sagar (1970, 53.95 m, 1,143 m, irrigation-hydro-water supply) and Jawahar Sagar (1972, 44.8 m, 219.46 m, hydro only). The 50:50 share, the megawatt figures, the phase scheme and the lift-canal roster trace only to coaching material. Kota Barrage is not in the register, which lists dams |
| Mahi Bajaj Sagar is the longest dam in Rajasthan at 3,109 m, completed 31 October 1983, shared Gujarat and Rajasthan 55:45, power 140.95 MW | The superlative is refuted and the year conflicts. The 3,109 m is right and is in the body from the CWC's 2025 register, but 28 Rajasthan entries in that register are longer, led by Parbati Dam in Dhaulpur district at 7,985.76 m. The register gives the year of completion as 1985, not 1983. Note also that the figure usually printed for Mahi Bajaj Sagar is 3,019 m, which is the register's 3,109 with two digits swapped. RPSC's own 2023 key confirms the venture is Gujarat and Rajasthan; the 55:45 split and the megawatt figure were not traced |
| Bhakra-Nangal and Beas shares: Rajasthan 15.2 per cent (227 MW) of Bhakra, 427 of 1,386 MW from the Beas project, 59 per cent of supply from Pong and 20 per cent from Pandoh, and the 1981 split of 8.6 / 4.22 / 3.50 MAF | The agreements are covered; the numbers are not. The Ministry of Jal Shakti's note on the Ravi and Beas Waters Tribunal is now in the body with every date in the chain, but it does not state the MAF split, and no government source for the power shares was located. Bhakra Dam is at Bhakra in Bilaspur district, Himachal Pradesh, and Nangal at Nangal in Rupnagar district, Punjab; the Hoshiarpur location that circulates is wrong |
| Gang Canal: agreement 4 September 1920, inaugurated 26 October 1927 by Lord Irwin at Shivpur Head, offtake at Hussainiwala Head, Firozpur, 137 km with four branches totalling 1,280 km, centenary from 26 October 2026 | Not verified, and the centenary claim is self-defeating. The centenary of an October 1927 opening falls in 2027, and a rival opening date of 5 December 1925 circulates in the same material. What is sourced is in the body: the Review names the Firozpur feeder as the common feeder of the Gang Nahar and Bhakra systems, and puts the Gang canal command at 3.14 lakh hectares |
| District extremes: highest irrigation percentage and largest irrigated area Sri Ganganagar, lowest Churu, smallest Rajsamand; Rajasthan holds 1.16 per cent of India's surface water and 1.72 per cent of its groundwater | Not verified. The Economic Review's statistical appendix has no district-wise irrigation table, so these cannot be checked against the source they are attributed to. The chapter's opening framing of about 1 per cent of India's available water stands as written |
| Parwan: 637 villages, 16 MCM reserved for Shergarh Wildlife Sanctuary, 79 MCM for thermal power supporting 2,970 MW, 50 MCM for drinking water, foundation stone 17 September 2013 | Partly refuted, partly unverified. The Economic Review 2025-26 gives 571 villages, not 637, and that figure is in the body with the 2.01 lakh ha CCA, the 1,402 drinking-water villages and the revised sanction of ₹7,355.23 crore. The Shergarh reservation, the thermal allocation and the 2013 date were not traced. The dam's 490 MCM gross and 462 MCM live storage are in NRLD 2023 and do corroborate the storage figures in circulation |
| PKC-ERCP's five barrages and two dams: Ramgarh on the Kool at Kishanganj (Baran), Mahalpur on the Parvati at Mangrol (Baran), Mej on the Mej at Indergarh (Bundi), Nimod Rathore on the Banas at Chauth ka Barwara, Dungari Dam on the Banas; funding Centre 90 : states 10 | Partly covered. Navnera Barrage is confirmed on the Kalisindh in Kota by NRLD 2023 and is in the body with its dimensions, and the Review names Ramgarh and Mahalpur barrages, the Navnera pump house, the Chambal aqueduct and the Navnera-Mej-Galwa-Bisalpur-Isarda feeder. The river-and-tehsil roster, Mej and Nimod Rathore barrages, Dungari Dam and the 90:10 split for this project were not traced to a document read here. The 90:10 pattern is verified for the three Upper Yamuna national projects, which is a different scheme |
| Sambhar's economics: 8.7 per cent of India's salt and 80 per cent of Rajasthan's, worked by Sambhar Salts Ltd, a venture of Hindustan Salts Ltd (60%) and the state (40%), pans called kyar, spirulina, the state's only salt museum, 30 per cent of the lake under encroachment, mass bird deaths from avian botulism in 2019 and 2025 | Not verified, and one part is doubtful on the arithmetic. The only government figure located puts the whole state at 21.58 of India's 268.87 lakh tonnes in 2014-15, about 8 per cent, which leaves no room for Sambhar alone at 8.7 per cent. The Salt Commissioner's own site could not be reached. The bird-death episodes are not dated from a primary record here, though the Budget 2026-27 provision for avian-disease centres at Bharatpur, Sambhar and Mithdi-Kuchaman is sourced on the biodiversity page |
| Sambhar is a bolson and the lowest point of Rajasthan, roughly 32 to 36 km by 3 to 12 km | Not verified. The Ramsar sheet gives the area (24,000 ha) and the depth (0.5 to 2.0 m) and no linear dimensions, and states no elevation. The inland-drainage explanation of the salinity is in the body and does not depend on the bolson term |
| Pachpadra and Didwana vocabulary: Pachpadra is 98 per cent sodium chloride, the saltiest in the state, with reshta, morli, brine and kosiya, worked by the Kharwal; Didwana, also Khalda, yields sodium sulphate and so is inedible, worked by Rajasthan State Chemical Works (1964) with private units at Deval | Not verified in any part. This is a clean vocabulary set of exactly the kind section 3 is built on, and no government source for any of it was located. Carry the sodium-sulphate distinction as an aggregator claim, not as chemistry this page vouches for |
| The saline lakes beyond the four: Phalodi, Kavod, Pala, Kuchaman, Degana, Sujangarh, Tal Chhapar, with Kolayat repeatedly keyed as not saline; all remnants of the Tethys Sea, most numerous in Didwana-Kuchaman | Not verified. The four in the body are those this chapter can source. The Kolayat trap is worth knowing precisely because it recurs, but no primary source classifying these water bodies by salinity was located, and the Tethys origin is a geological claim this page does not make |
| Builder-and-date roster for the freshwater lakes: Pichola 1388 dug by Pichhu Banjara, Fateh Sagar 1687 rebuilt 1888, Rajsamand 1662 by Maharana Raj Singh as the first famine-relief lake with the Raj Prashasti on 25 slabs, Foy Sagar 1891-92 as the second, Anasagar by Arnoraj, Udaisagar 1559, Nakki the highest at about 1,200 m | Not verified. Only the four Jodhpur dates in the body are sourced, and those to the state textbook. The famine-relief pairing and the Pichola-to-Fateh-Sagar overflow chain are the strongest items in the set and neither could be traced. Nakki's altitude is plausible and is not asserted; the competing claim that it is also the deepest lake in the state has no measurement behind it anywhere |
| Jaisamand was built 1685-91, is also called Dhebar, and has seven islands, the largest Baba ka Bhakhda and the smallest Pyari | Partly covered, and the date is contested. The forest department's management plan and NRLD 2023 are in the body: built by Maharana Jai Singh, 14 km by 9 km, circumference about 88 km, with the register giving a year of completion of 1730 against the circulating 1685-91. The name Dhebar and the island roster were not traced |
| Jaisamand is the second-largest artificial lake in Asia | Not verified, and the department hedges. The Rajasthan Forest Department's own management plan calls it "one of the largest artificial sheets of fresh water in the world", with no ranking and no measure. A superlative with no stated basis is not carried |
| Johad or Johra and Pokhar as Rajasthani harvesting structures, with Sethani ka Johra (Churu, 1899) and Budha Johad (Sri Ganganagar), and pokhar holding water seven to eight months, mainly in Bundi | Not covered, and the conflict is real. Section 2's eight-way classification is the state textbook's and johad appears in it in no spelling, though it is the best-known Rajasthani harvesting word outside the state. Pokhar appears on this page only as the Jammu-region equivalent, which is the textbook's own cross-state table. No government document giving a nine- or ten-way classification was located |
| Yamuna, the Shekhawati phases: Phase I drinking water for Churu, Sikar, Jhunjhunu; Phase II irrigation of 35,000 ha in Churu and 70,000 ha in Jhunjhunu; alignment Hathnikund to Hansiyawas, 265 km | Refuted as a description of the MoU. The Government of India's record of the 17 February 2024 MoU is now in the body and its two stages are different: Phase 1 is 577 MCM of monsoon water for drinking, conditional on Haryana's full 24,000-cusec use of the Western Yamuna Canal, and the later stage is contingent on Renukaji, Lakhwar and Kishau. No hectare figures and no 265 km alignment appear in that record |
| Narmada Canal detail: work commenced 27 March 2008, canal 532 km of which Rajasthan holds 74 km (Jalore 65, Barmer 9), Israeli drip and sprinkler technique, and Barmer served by both the Narmada canal and IGNP | Not verified. The 1979 award and its four-state split are now in the body from the Ministry of Jal Shakti, as is the Review's command-area data. The start date, the kilometre split and the Israeli attribution were not traced, and the Barmer double-benefit observation follows from two sourced facts but is not itself stated in any document read here |
| Four smaller schemes: Rajiv Gandhi Siddhmukh Canal from Bhirani, Bhadra (1989), funded by the EU (1998) and NABARD (1999); Gurgaon Canal from Okhla Barrage, 1966-85; Bharatpur Canal, a sub-branch of the Agra Canal, 1964, 28 km, 8,500 ha; Isarda-Dausa drinking water project, August 2025, ₹350 crore | One of four partly covered. The Review names the Siddhmukh-Nohar Irrigation Project and that is in the body, together with RPSC's own key pairing Sidhmukh with Hanumangarh and Churu. The 1989 foundation, the EU and NABARD financing, the two Yamuna-fed eastern canals and the Isarda-Dausa scheme were not traced to a document read here |
| The National Lake Conservation Plan covered six Rajasthan lakes, including Nakki (Mount Abu) | Refuted, and the correction is in the body. The Ministry's own 2009 reply names Mansagar, Anasagar, Pushkar, Fateh Sagar and Pichola, and records Nakki as holding "in-principle" approval only, subject to National Board for Wild Life clearance. The same release opens by calling it three lakes, counting systems rather than lakes, and the NLCP itself was merged into NPCA on 7 February 2013 |
| District dam roster and superlatives: Jakham at Anooppura, 81 m, the highest dam in the state; Kanota the largest fish-farming dam; Bisalpur begun 1986-87, 580 m long, irrigating 69,300 ha; the Sei tunnel, Battisa Nala, Mansi Wakal, Som Kagdar and the rest | The superlative is now in the body and the figure is corrected. The CWC's 2025 register gives Jakham 82 m, not 81, and sorting all 315 Rajasthan entries by height puts it first, with nothing else above 74.5 m. Bisalpur is in the register at 39.5 m and 574 m, completed 1999, against the 580 m and 1986-87 in circulation. Kanota's fish-farming superlative and the wider district roster were not traced |
| Kaylana is fed by IGNP through the Hathi Canal and was the first lake in Rajasthan linked to IGNP; Machia beside it is India's first desert biological park | Not verified. Both are attractive claims and both would tie this chapter's two halves together, which is exactly why they need a source. Neither the Hathi Canal link nor either "first" claim was traced to a government document |
| Renuka and Lakhwar: 40 MW and 498 MCM, and 300 MW and 331 MCM, with Rajasthan among six partner states and Centre 90 : state 10 | The framing is corrected in the body; the figures are not verified. There are three identified storages, not two, Renukaji, Lakhwar and Kishau, all declared National Projects in 2008 on 90:10 funding, with agreements signed on 28 August 2018 (Lakhwar) and 11 January 2019 (Renukaji) and none located for Kishau. The megawatt and MCM figures were not traced; PIB gives Renukaji as a 148 m rock-fill dam supplying 23 cumec to Delhi |
Practice
- Practice: Rivers, Lakes, Water Harvesting and Irrigation — 45 questions built from this chapter: 37 MCQs, 5 assertion-reason and 3 match-the-following, plus flashcards and rapid one-liners.
- Every RAS Prelims Geography question, 2013–2024 — all 78 official questions with RPSC's keys and worked explanations.
More in This Series
- Rajasthan: Location, Extent and Physiography
- Rajasthan's Climate: Characteristics, Regions and the Monsoon
- Soils of Rajasthan: Classification, Distribution and Soil Health
- Agriculture of Rajasthan: Crops, Zones and the State's Standing
- Tourism in Rajasthan: Sites, Visitors and the World Heritage Count
- Natural Vegetation, Biodiversity and Conservation
- Livestock and Dairy Development
- Population, Urbanisation and Tribes
- Minerals and Energy Resources
- Geography of Rajasthan — every PYQ, solved
Sources & Verification
Written on 23 August 2026.
Source priority: the Government of Rajasthan's current Economic Review for every figure, the state textbook for the lake-to-district map, the traditional structures and their vocabulary. No coaching material or aggregator has been used on this page.
The documents themselves
| Document | Publisher | Dated | Open |
|---|---|---|---|
| Economic Review 2025-26, "Water Security and Resilience" | Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Govt of Rajasthan | with Budget 2026-27 | |
| Press Note, Budget 2026-27 | Finance Department, Govt of Rajasthan | 11 Feb 2026 | |
| Rajasthan Adhyayan, Class 10, chapter 3 — Paramparagat Jal Prabandhan | Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education | district list on the pre-2023 map | printed volume, no stable link |
Links were working on 23 August 2026.
The split between the two kinds of source is deliberate and is the same rule used across this unit. Structures, vocabulary and locations come from the textbook; every number comes from the Economic Review. A khadin's mechanism and a lake's district do not change. An irrigation total changes every year.
Taken from the Economic Review 2025-26, read directly: the 40.19 lakh hectares of created irrigation and the six major, five medium and thirty-four minor projects; the IGNP command area, land allotment, budget and named lift schemes; the Narmada Canal Project's command area, villages, towns and its status as India's first major project with mandatory sprinkler irrigation; the Yamuna allocation, the 1994 agreement and the February 2024 MoU with Haryana; and the whole of the Modified PKC-ERCP entry, including the DPR value and its submission date.
Taken from the textbook, read directly: the lake and talab lists by district, the eight traditional structures with their dimensions and attributions, the rainwater-harvesting glossary, and the cross-state comparison of equivalent structures.
Four textbook pairs were verified independently rather than taken on trust. Gadsisar in Jaisalmer, Kaylana in Jodhpur, Gap (Gaib) Sagar in Dungarpur and Chand Baori at Abhaneri in Dausa all reproduce against RPSC's own 2013 answer key, which is reproduced on this page.
A caveat is carried on the district lists. The textbook's lists are on the pre-2023 framework of 33 districts and cannot be mapped one-to-one onto the current 41. Where a district has since been split, the parent name is retained as printed.
One classification rests on the textbook alone. No Government of Rajasthan document setting out the same eight-way classification of traditional structures, with these dimensions and attributions, was located. Section 2 is therefore tagged to the textbook throughout rather than presented as a government position.
Two things are stated as provisional rather than done. Figures marked "up to December" are nine-month positions in 2025-26, not results. And the PKC-ERCP link is being built: Navnera Barrage and Isarda Dam are recorded as complete, the DPR for the Rajasthan portion was submitted in July 2025, and everything else is under construction, allocated or under survey. The project is not delivering water, and this page does not say it is.
Not covered here, and therefore not asserted: rivers and drainage. The Rivers and Lakes syllabus bullet has two halves and this chapter covers the lakes half together with irrigation. The Banas, Chambal, Luni and Mahi systems, the inland-drainage rivers and the Triveni Sangam are queued for a separate chapter and are not treated here.
Added on 29 August 2026
Every addition below was checked against the document named, and every link was confirmed to resolve on 29 August 2026. Where a claim in circulation did not survive that check, it is in the Aggregator Watch above rather than in the body.
Jaisamand's district. Rajasthan Forest Department, Management Plan of Jaisamand Wildlife Sanctuary, 2025-26 to 2034-35, 266 pages, downloaded and searched in full. The document contradicts itself and both halves are reported here. Its preface says the sanctuary "falls within revenue limits of Salumber District"; its notification text says the sanctuary "is situated in Girwa, Sarada and Salumbar Tehsil"; an annexure heads a table "Tehsil: SARADA District: UDAIPUR"; and its advisory committee lists the SDOs of Girwa, Sarada and Salumbar all under Udaipur. The Board of Revenue's SDO-wise tehsil roster of 22 January 2026 resolves it: Girwa belongs to Udaipur district and Sarada and Salumbar to Salumber, so the sanctuary lies in both. The same plan supplies the lake's dimensions, its circumference, the department's own hedged description of its size, and the sanctuary's notification date of 7 November 1955.
Source-wise irrigation, net and gross. Economic Review 2025-26, Statistical Appendix tables 27 and 28, the 2024-25 (Final) rows. The percentage columns on this page are arithmetic on the Review's hectares and are labelled as such. The shares that circulate attributed to this same edition, 73.45 per cent wells, 23.67 per cent canals, 0.41 per cent ponds and 2.47 per cent other, are the Review's 2022-23 net-irrigation row, three years stale, and the second figure of 69.39 per cent that circulates beside them is the 2021-22 gross row. The gross total in circulation, 1,34,62,172 ha, is a transcription error for 1,34,62,772 ha.
Project classification. Central Water Commission, Project Appraisal, for the major and medium thresholds and for the different appraisal routes the two classes take.
The eleven named projects and their locations. Economic Review 2025-26, project by project, including Parwan's 571 villages, against the 637 in circulation.
Dam parameters and three rank claims, re-done on the current register. Central Water Commission and National Dam Safety Authority, National Register of Specified Dams 2025, Rajasthan section, downloaded (about 30 MB, 610 pages) and parsed in full. All 315 Rajasthan entries were extracted and sorted three times — by height, by length and by gross storage. Jakham stands first by height at 82 metres, which supports the "tallest dam in the state" claim while correcting the figure from the 81 in circulation. Mahi Bajaj Sagar stands twenty-ninth by length, so 28 dams are longer and the "longest dam in the state" claim fails on the register's own data; Parbati Dam in Dhaulpur leads at 7,985.76 m. Rana Pratap Sagar holds the most water at 2,904.85 MCM. The five entries whose dam type is a barrage or a weir were checked separately and none of them disturbs any of the three results. An earlier draft of this revision worked from the 2023 edition and gave Parbati's year as 1983 and Galwa's length as 6,088 m; the 2025 register gives 1963 and 6,068 m, and those are the figures carried.
The Ravi-Beas chain. Ministry of Jal Shakti, Department of Water Resources, note on the Ravi and Beas Waters Tribunal, for every date in the table. The document does not state the MAF split among the three states, and this page therefore does not print one.
The Narmada award. Ministry of Jal Shakti, Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal (October, 1969), for the tribunal's constitution, the award and notification dates, the four-state split totalling 28.00 MAF, the Sardar Sarovar full reservoir level and the 45-year review clause.
The Yamuna MoU's fine print. Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Jal Shakti, release of 17 February 2024, which gives the underlying MoU's date as 12 May 1994, the Upper Yamuna Review Committee's instruction of 15 February 2018, the Western Yamuna Canal precondition, and the dependence of the non-monsoon share on Renukaji, Lakhwar and Kishau. The three storages' status comes from PIB, 10 January 2019 and PIB, 11 January 2019, the second of which records the Renukaji signing itself rather than the announcement of it. No agreement for Kishau was located, and the page says so.
The project's other name and its second instrument. Government of Rajasthan, Finance Department, Budget Speech 2025-26, paragraphs 3 and 101, for "राम जल सेतु लिंक परियोजना (संशोधित PKC-ERCP)". Press Information Bureau, Year End Review 2024, Department of Water Resources, for the MoU of 28 January 2024 and the separate MoA of 5 December 2024, and for the project's place among the five priority links. The Prime Minister's Office record of the event of 17 December 2024 was used rather than the advance notice issued the day before, because an advance notice records an intention and not an occurrence.
The Review's two irrigation figures for the link project. Economic Review 2025-26 states 2.51 lakh hectares of new irrigation in its overview chapter and in the opening paragraph of its water chapter, and 2.21 lakh hectares later in the same chapter. Both are printed here with their locations named. This page previously carried only the second.
Sambhar's designation file. Ramsar Information Sheet for Sambhar Lake, site 464, read in full. Its statement that the lake lies "in the district of Jodhpur" is an error in the founding record and is reported as one, together with its garbled catchment unit. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change's Ramsar Sites of India as on 21 April 2026 supplies the current five-site list and Siliserh's designation date and area.
Salt output. Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Salt Production in Rajasthan, 7 August 2015. This is the most recent official state-wise figure located; the Salt Commissioner's own site was unreachable across repeated attempts while other government hosts answered normally. The eleven-year gap is stated on the page rather than hidden.
Lake conservation. Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Environment and Forests, National Lake Conservation Plan in Rajasthan, 7 December 2009, and the CCEA's merger decision of 7 February 2013. The 2009 release's own internal inconsistency, calling five named entries "three lakes", is reproduced rather than tidied away.
MJSA's four phases and the dam counts. Economic Review 2025-26, table 8.1 and figure 8.5. The Review's "212 large dams" and the register's "315" are the same commission's counts in two editions, 2019 and 2025, and both are printed with the edition named.
This pairing was changed three times in three days, and the whole sequence is recorded because a reader who saw any one version deserves to know what happened. 28 August 2026: changed from Udaipur to Salumber on one sentence in the preface of the Forest Department's management plan. 29 August 2026: withdrawn back to Udaipur, because reading the whole plan showed the sanctuary is "situated in Girwa, Sarada and Salumbar Tehsil" and Girwa is in Udaipur district on the Board of Revenue's roster — so the sanctuary straddles two districts. That correction was right about the sanctuary and wrong to carry the conclusion across to the lake. 30 August 2026: settled on Salumber for the lake, on a source not consulted in either earlier pass — the Economic Review 2025-26's district-wise Panch Gaurav table, which names Jaisamand Lake as Salumber's destination and separately gives Udaipur's as Fateh Sagar and Pichola. Two current state documents now agree on the lake; the dam register that says Udaipur is on the pre-2023 framework; and the sanctuary genuinely reaches into Udaipur's Girwa tehsil. The lesson stands and is worth more than the answer: one sentence of a document is not the document, and a document you have not opened is not evidence.
