Object description

The Hooghly River or the Bhāgirathi-Hooghly, originally and in local tongues the 'Ganga', and also called Kati-Ganga, is an approximately 260-kilometre-long distributary of the Ganges River in West Bengal, India. The Ganges splits into the Padma and the Hooghly near Giria, Murshidabad. Today there is a further man-made bifurcation of the river upstream at Farakka. The Padma flows eastward into Bangladesh, whereas the Hooghly flows south through West Bengal. The river flows through the Rarh region, the lower deltaic districts of West Bengal, and eventually into the Bay of Bengal. The upper riparian zone of the river is called Bhagirathi while the lower riparian zone is called Hooghly. Major rivers that drain into the Bhagirathi-Hooghly include Mayurakshi, Jalangi, Ajay, Damodar, Rupnarayan and Haldi rivers other than the Ganges. Kolkata and Hugli-Chinsura, the headquarters of Hooghly , are located on the banks of this river.