BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 90 of 144

Correct — C, Gandak. The district the canal actually runs through answers the question in its own words. West Champaran's official district page, under the heading 'Irrigation Facilities', reads: 'Tirhut, Tribeni and Done canals are the most prominent canals operating in this district. They get their water supply from the Gandak river at Balmikinager, the northern most part of the district bordering Nepal.' That is the Government of Bihar naming the canal, the river and the offtake in one sentence. The central record says the same thing. India-WRIS, the Ministry of Jal Shakti's national water resources information system, carries project JI02076, the Gandak Major Irrigation Project, Bihar — river Gandak, basin Ganga, engineering type Diversion, status Completed, inter-country Nepal, work begun in the Third Plan and finished in the Sixth — and its Remarks field states, verbatim, that the 'Command Includes Tribeni canal, Western and Eastern Gandak canal, Teur and Dhaka Canal'. The Triveni or Tribeni canal is therefore one named limb of a single Gandak command. The same portal's register of barrages and weirs in the Ganga basin puts the Gandak Barrage on the Gandak at Bettiah in Pashchim Champaran district, completed in 1968 and 739 metres long; that is the Valmiki Nagar site, which the district's own tourism page still calls by its older name — 'Formally known as BHAINSA LOTAN, it is a famous tourist spot where a dam is built on the river Gandak (Gandak Project)'. A third confirmation comes from Bihar's own power utility, and it is the most precise of the three. The Bihar State Hydroelectric Power Corporation runs a 2 × 1.5 MW station in Bagaha block of West Champaran whose salient features begin: 'The Gandak Canal is one of the oldest canal systems in the country and the modified canal system is in operation since 1968-69. The existing fall at RD 6.7 of Tirhut Main Canal & drop available at the head regulator of Triveni Canal off taking at RD. 9.5 of T.M.C. is proposed to be combined to generate 3.0 MW of Power.' In other words the Triveni canal's head regulator sits at reduced distance 9.5 of the Tirhut Main Canal, which is itself supplied from the Gandak. A state department, a central portal and a state undertaking, working independently, put the same river behind the canal, and the command it waters covers 879 thousand hectares across Muzaffarpur, Purba Champaran, Vaishali, Pashchim Champaran, Saran (Chhapra), Gopalganj and Siwan.

• (a)Kosi — The Kosi has a canal system of its own and it is a different one, three hundred kilometres to the east. India-WRIS lists the Kosi Barrage at Bhimnagar in Bihar, completed in 1963 and 1,149 metres long, feeding the Kosi Barrage and Eastern Canal Major Irrigation Project — approved by the Planning Commission in 1952, culturable command 612 thousand hectares, serving Araria, Saharsa, Khagaria, Supaul, Purnia, Madhepura and Katihar. Not one of those is West Champaran. The option is nonetheless the strongest of the three wrong ones, because the Kosi has a Triveni of its own: the Sapta Kosi is formed at Triveni in Nepal out of the Sun Kosi, the Arun and the Tamur, and a candidate who first met the word there will feel the pull. The name marks a threefold confluence, and eastern India has more than one.
• (b)Sone — The Sone waters Bihar's oldest large canal network, but from the opposite corner of the state and on the far side of the Ganga. India-WRIS puts the Sone Barrage at Sasaram in Rohtas district, completed 1965 and 1,407 metres long, supplying the Sone Canals Major Irrigation Project — a scheme the portal records as having both begun and been completed in the Pre-Plan period, with a culturable command of 560 thousand hectares in Bhojpur, Arwal, Patna, Aurangabad, Rohtas and Kaimur. Every one of those districts lies south of the Ganga, in the old-rock country on the Vindhyan and plateau fringe. The Sone rises on the Amarkantak plateau and joins the Ganga from the south-west; it never comes within two hundred kilometres of the Nepal border where the Triveni canal takes off.
• (d)Mayurakshi — The Mayurakshi is not a Bihar river at all, which makes this the pure name distractor of the set. India-WRIS records the Mayurakshi Major Irrigation Project under West Bengal, on the Mayurakshi or Mor, benefiting Birbhum, Barddhaman and Murshidabad, with a companion Mayurakshi Left Bank Canal project listed under Jharkhand and the Massanjore dam in Jharkhand's Dumka district. The river rises in the Trikut hills near Deoghar and drains east into the Bhagirathi–Hooghly system, so nothing in its catchment touches Bihar's territory or the Ganga's north bank. It is on the option list only because it is an eastern-India irrigation name that a candidate revising Bihar's canals will have seen nearby in the same table.

The Gandak — the Kali or Krishna Gandaki in its upper reaches and the Narayani in Nepal — is one of the great Himalayan tributaries of the Ganga. India-WRIS traces it from a glacier in southern Tibet at 7,620 metres, south-east of Dhaulagiri, through Nepal and into the plains of West Champaran at Triveni, better known now as Valmikinagar; from there it runs south-east across north Bihar, forms the Uttar Pradesh–Bihar boundary for about 45 kilometres and joins the Ganga opposite Patna. Of its 45,731 sq km catchment only 7,288 sq km lie in Bihar, against 30,882 in Nepal and 5,687 in Tibet, so the river arrives in the state already large and snow-fed, having run some 380 km before it reaches India and about 250 km after. A dependable flow of that kind is worked by diversion rather than by storage: a barrage throws the water sideways into canals instead of impounding it behind a dam. The Gandak Project is that barrage plus the canal network it commands, and, unusually for an Indian irrigation scheme, it is an inter-country project — the headworks stand on the Indo-Nepal border and both countries draw from them. The Triveni canal is the north-westernmost limb of the command, and the oldest.

Place the canal geographically instead of hunting for the name and the item collapses. Triveni is in West Champaran, at the extreme north-west corner of Bihar where the river crosses over from Nepal, and only one of the four rivers offered reaches that corner. The Kosi enters Bihar three hundred kilometres to the east and is commanded from Bhimnagar in Supaul; the Sone comes up from the south-west and is commanded from Sasaram in Rohtas, on the far side of the Ganga; the Mayurakshi never touches Bihar at all. So the single discriminating fact is where the canal head is, not any property of the canal. It is worth knowing why the place carries that name, because the name is itself the trap. India-WRIS records that the Gandak 'debouches into the plains of West Champaran district of Bihar at Triveni (Valmikinagar). At this point two more tributaries viz. Panchand & Sarhad join the river' — a threefold meeting, and hence Triveni. But the Kosi has a Triveni of its own in Nepal, where the Sun Kosi, the Arun and the Tamur unite to form the Sapta Kosi, so a candidate who met the word on the Kosi will reach for option (a). Two further guards are worth carrying. First, do not be thrown by the Gandak Barrage's completion date of 1968: the Triveni canal is a much older work that the modern project absorbed, which is why India-WRIS lists it inside the command rather than as a project in its own right, and why the state power utility describes the Triveni canal's head regulator as taking off from the Tirhut Main Canal rather than from the river. Second, India-WRIS separately records a wholly different Triveni or Tribeni Weir at Godda in Jharkhand, completed in 1961 and 121.92 metres long; that structure is not Bihar's Triveni canal.

• West Champaran district administration, 'Irrigation Facilities', verbatim: 'Tirhut, Tribeni and Done canals are the most prominent canals operating in this district. They get their water supply from the Gandak river at Balmikinager, the northern most part of the district bordering Nepal.'
• India-WRIS project record JI02076, Gandak Major Irrigation Project, Bihar — Remarks field, verbatim: 'Command Includes Tribeni canal, Western and Eastern Gandak canal, Teur and Dhaka Canal'; engineering type Diversion, inter-country Nepal, begun in the Third Plan and completed in the Sixth
• Gandak Barrage: on the Gandak at Bettiah, Pashchim Champaran district, Bihar; completed 1968; 739 metres long — the Valmiki Nagar site, formerly called Bhainsa Lotan
• Gandak Project: approved by the Planning Commission in 1961; approved cost Rs 36.56 crore against an actual Rs 287.41 crore; culturable command area 879 thousand hectares; ultimate irrigation potential 982 thousand hectares, of which 971 thousand created; districts benefited Muzaffarpur, Purba Champaran, Vaishali, Pashchim Champaran, Saran (Chhapra), Gopalganj and Siwan
• Why the place is called Triveni — India-WRIS, Gandak Basin: the river 'debouches into the plains of West Champaran district of Bihar at Triveni (Valmikinagar). At this point two more tributaries viz. Panchand & Sarhad join the river'; total catchment 45,731 sq km, of which 30,882 lie in Nepal, 5,687 in Tibet, 1,874 in Uttar Pradesh and 7,288 in Bihar
• Bihar State Hydroelectric Power Corporation, Triveni Link Canal HEP, Bagaha block, West Champaran: 2 × 1.5 MW, design head 4.49 metres, design discharge 70.85 cumecs, annual generation 14.94 million units, built on 'the drop available at the head regulator of Triveni Canal off taking at RD. 9.5 of T.M.C.' — the page describes the Gandak canal system as 'one of the oldest canal systems in the country', in operation in its modified form since 1968-69
• The canal is a colonial protective-irrigation work, not a post-Independence one: its project papers from October 1904 to September 1915 were published as 'Selections from the Records of the Governments of Bengal and Bihar and Orissa … Relating to the Tribeni Canal Project in the Champaran District' (Patna, Superintendent, Government Printing, 1919), a 280-page volume covering the canal bed, seven aqueducts, six syphons and the flood damage of 1910; on that record work began in 1897 as famine relief, resumed in 1901, and the first reach opened on 7 June 1909 before the line was pushed on to Mainatand
• The three canals named in that 1919 volume — Tribeni, Tiur and Dhaka — are the same three India-WRIS still lists in the Gandak command a century later, as 'Tribeni canal … Teur and Dhaka Canal'
• Kosi and Sone for contrast: Kosi Barrage at Bhimnagar, completed 1963, 1,149 m, culturable command 612 thousand hectares in Araria, Saharsa, Khagaria, Supaul, Purnia, Madhepura and Katihar; Sone Barrage at Sasaram in Rohtas, completed 1965, 1,407 m, culturable command 560 thousand hectares in Bhojpur, Arwal, Patna, Aurangabad, Rohtas and Kaimur
• Trap inside the records themselves: India-WRIS separately lists a 'Triveni / Tribeni Weir' at Godda in Jharkhand, completed 1961 and 121.92 m long — a different structure on a different river in a different state

• Assuming Triveni must belong to the Kosi — the Kosi command starts at Bhimnagar in Supaul, three hundred kilometres east of Triveni, even though the Kosi does have its own Triveni in Nepal where the Sun Kosi, Arun and Tamur meet
• Confusing Bihar's Triveni canal with the separate Triveni/Tribeni Weir at Godda in Jharkhand, or with the Triveni Medium Irrigation Project also listed in Jharkhand
• Dating the canal from the 1968 barrage. The Triveni canal is a colonial work of the 1900s that the Gandak Project later absorbed; today its head regulator takes off from the Tirhut Main Canal, not straight off the river
• Treating the Mayurakshi as a Bihar river — it is worked in West Bengal and Jharkhand, with the Massanjore dam in Dumka district

BPSC prefers the bare pairing — a named Bihar canal, project or barrage set against four rivers, or a named river set against four districts — because it can be marked without ambiguity and needs no reading. The wrong options are chosen for plausibility of place rather than of engineering: three eastern-India water names, one of them not even a Bihar river. UPSC almost never names a state canal. It asks the same geography one level up, as the sequence in which the Himalayan tributaries join the Ganga, or as a statement about which river feeds which lake, so the fact it wants is the river's course rather than the works built on it. Prepare Bihar's four commands — Gandak, Kosi, Sone and Kamla — with their headworks and districts for BPSC, and the Ganga's tributary order from west to east for UPSC.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Gandak Barrage, the headwork of the Gandak Project, is located in which district of Bihar?

  • (a)Purba Champaran
  • (b)Pashchim Champaran
  • (c)Gopalganj
  • (d)Muzaffarpur

  Answer(b) Pashchim Champaran — India-WRIS places the Gandak Barrage on the Gandak at Bettiah in Pashchim Champaran district, completed in 1968, at the Valmiki Nagar site formerly known as Bhainsa Lotan.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Sone Canals irrigation system of Bihar takes off from a barrage located at

  • (a)Bhimnagar
  • (b)Valmiki Nagar
  • (c)Sasaram
  • (d)Barauni

  Answer(c) Sasaram — the Sone Barrage in Rohtas district, completed 1965 and 1,407 metres long, supplies the Sone Canals command in Bhojpur, Arwal, Patna, Aurangabad, Rohtas and Kaimur. Bhimnagar is the Kosi headwork and Valmiki Nagar the Gandak headwork.