Engineer's Day in India: celebrating M. Visvesvaraya's birthday

New Delhi: Engineer's Day is observed in India on September 15 in honour of Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya who was born on the day in 1860.

He was the chief designer of the flood protection system designed and built for the city of Hyderabad, as well as the chief engineer responsible for the construction of the Krishna Raja Sagara dam in Mysore which created the largest reservoir in Asia at that time.

He also designed and patented a system of automatic weir water floodgates that were first installed in 1903 at the Khadakvasla Reservoir near Pune. These gates were employed to raise the flood supply level of storage in the reservoir to the highest level likely to be attained by a flood without causing any damage to the dam. Based on the success of these gates, the same system was replicated at the Tigra Dam project in Gwalior and the Krishna Raja Sagara project in Karnataka.

Engineer\'s Day is observed in India on September 15, the birth anniversary of Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya.

A recipient of India's highest honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1955, he was knighted as a Commander of the British Indian Empire by King George V before Independence.

He died on April 14, 1962.

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