Key Facts about Hooghly River

About Hooghly River

• The Hooghly River, also known as the Bhagirathi-Hoogly and Kati-Ganga River, is one of the significant rivers in West Bengal.
• It is a distributary or arm of the Ganges River, about 260 km long.
• Course:
  • It is formed in Murshidabad, where Ganga splits into two parts – while the part flowing through Bangladesh is called the Padma.
  • The other part is the Hooghly, which flows through a heavily industrialized area of West Bengal.
  • The Hooghly river is silted up above Kolkata, and the river flows to the west and south to the estuary of Rupnarayan and then south and southwest to enter the Bay of Bengal through a 32 km-wide estuary.
• The Hooghly’s majority of water comes from the Farakka Feeder Canal instead of natural water. 
• The Farakka Barrage is a dam that diverts water from the Ganges into a canal near the town of Tildanga in Malda district. This supplies the Hooghly with adequate water even in the dry season.
• Haldi, Ajay, Damodar, and Rupnarayan are the rivers that feed the lower reaches of the Hooghly. 
• The important cities near the Hoogli River are Jiaganj, Azimganj, Murshidabad, and Baharampur.
• It is spanned by a cantilever bridge between Haora and Kolkata and by the Bally Bridge between Bally and Baranagar.

Q1) What are tides?

Tides are very long-period waves that move through the ocean in response to the forces exerted by the moon and sun. Tides originate in the ocean and progress toward the coastlines where they appear as the regular rise and fall of the sea surface.When the highest part, or crest, of the wave reaches a particular location, high tide occurs; low tide corresponds to the lowest part of the wave, or its trough. The difference in height between the high tide and the low tide is called the tidal range.

Source: Police recover bodies of five missing after performing Mahalaya rituals in Hooghly river