Kurukshetra University (KU) has established a multi-disciplinary Centre of Excellence for Research on Saraswati River (CERSR).
Making efforts to convert mythological river ‘Saraswati’ into reality, Haryana Government had last year announced to set up the Centre of Research on Saraswati in KU.
Prof AR Chaudhri, Department of Geology, KU, has been appointed the Director of the Centre. Chaudhri said that the project would be purely a scientific endeavour and a group of experts from different fields of science would work to validate various claims that the river flowed through various regions of Haryana.
He said that the research would be expanded to other states associated with the river.
Chaudhri said the Haryana Saraswati Heritage Development Board, headed by the Chief Minister Manohar lal had sanctioned Rs 20 lakh and the KU had proposed the budget of Rs 36 crores for the Centre.
He said exploration of the lost river and its scope of use for human consumption would be among the focus areas of the project. Since teams of geologists, hydrologists, archaeologists, earth science and allied subjects would be roped in for the project, the CERSR findings would further throw light on India’s cultural heritage, Chaudhari said.
He added that the dating of sediments and subsurface imagery were the crucial part of the project to determine claims associated with the mighty river that used to flow centuries ago.
“Data collection and scientific testing of the geological samples is quite a costly affair, but the State Government has already assured financial support. The project will be instrumental in validating beliefs of the existence of the Saraswati and its ancient course on scientific grounds,” he added.
In December 2006, archaeologists Rajesh Purohit and Rajendra Singh Rana had first claimed to have discovered the river bed of the lost Saraswati at Bhor Saidan village in Kurukshetra
Purohit, Director of Allahabad Museum, and his team had spotted a painted gray ware or the pottery believed to be associated with the Mahabharata times.
The Saraswati is believed to have disappeared due to the movement of tectonic plates.
In 2008, the previous Congress Government had mooted a proposal to ‘revive’ the lost river of the Vedic age. In May 2015, the discovery of water from the inactive Saraswati river route in Yamunanagar made the BJP government claim that water was flowing out of fresh reservoirs buried underneath.
Chaudhri said the Bandarpoonch glacier in the upper Himalayas in Uttarakhand was widely considered a source of the river.