- According to a report published in ‘The Hindu’, the Union Water Ministry has excavated an old, dried-up river in Prayagraj that linked the Ganga and Yamuna rivers.
- The aim is to develop it as a potential groundwater recharge source, according to officials at the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), a body under the Union Jal Shakti Ministry that coordinates the cleaning of the Ganga. These paleochannels reveal the course of rivers that have ceased to exist.
- The “ancient buried river” is around 4 km wide, 45 km long and consisted of a 15-metre-thick layer buried under soil.
- The discovery was made in December 2018 by a team of scientists from the CSIR-NGRI and the Central Groundwater Board during a helicopter-borne geophysical survey covering the Prayagraj and Kaushambi region in Uttar Pradesh.
- The newly discovered river was a “buried paleochannel that joins the Yamuna river at Durgapur village, about 26 km south of the current Ganga-Yamuna confluence at Prayagraj.
- This palaeochannel discovery followed a 2016 report by Professor K.S. Valdiya headed seven member committee, commissioned by the Water Resources Ministry.
- K.S. Valdiya committee report concluded that evidence from palaeochannels suggested that the mythological Saraswati river did indeed exist.
