History of Lakes in Raipur

The city’s love for man-made lakes started a thousand years ago, when the rulers of Chhattisgarh started constructing water bodies to ensure steady water supply throughout the year. Chhattisgarh is gifted with nature’s bounty of water resources, with its major rivers interconnecting canals and umpteen tanks and lakes of diverse area and capacities. There was an unwritten dictum among the local folks as to the traditional practice of maintenance of tanks, which sluice to be opened and how one would ration water in times of storage. Apart from serving as water harvesting device these tanks are found to facilitate the growth of a wide variety of plants ranging from herbs to hefty tree species in the surrounding moist banks, as well as algal and other aquatic vegetation in the water.

The nature of the lakes in Raipur in the olden times are sustainable, that, most of them were found to have inlets and outlets, with sluice to control the inflow and outflow of water. This aided in constant circulation of water, with a constant flushing out of the polluted water and inflow of fresh water (rain/ river water). Besides, there were also canals interconnecting a few tanks together. Read More

The oldest lake, Budha Talab, was constructed in the 10th century by Raja Brahma Dev and the most recent one, Telibanda, in 1935. Rulers continued the trend through the years because they realised this was the only way to conserve rainwater in the area that has non-porous soil. At its peak, Raipur had around 200 lakes. Over a period of 500 years the ruler and planners of the city made water bodies in elevated areas in the direction of descending elevation.

Even today, the striking feature of Raipur are it’s ‘Talabs’. Lakes are dug for various purposes across the country, but in Raipur traditionally, the aim was to store water for domestic purposes and also to increase the water table.Show Less