The Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC) off-taking from Madhopur irrigates agricultural lands in Punjab and provides water to the cities of Pathankot, Gurdaspur, Batala and Amritsar.

During the partition arrangements, Cyrill Radcliffe allocated three tehsils of Gurdaspur district to India for maintaining the integrity of the canal system from Madhopur.

The canal plan was created by Ali Mardan Khan and built into construction by Mullah Ala'ul-Mul Tuni.

[2] In the 19th century, the Sikh emperor Ranjit Singh refurbished the canal and extended it with another branch going to Amritsar.

[5][6] Providing employment to the disbanded Sikh soldiers via agriculture is said to have been the main motivation for its urgent construction.

[10][11] Modern commentators also note that the canal was constructed with an excessive slope of 0.05 m/km which caused erosion of its bed.

The total length of the canal network is 3,119 kilometres (1,938 mi) and cultivates 573,000 hectares (1,420,000 acres) of land.