The Triveni Canal has been constructed on which of the following rivers?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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) 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) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2023 Q90 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q90 — Geography PYQ with Answer