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Varsha Ashok Aglawe has assumed charge as the 54th Director General of the Geological Survey of India.
She is the first woman to head the organisation since its founding in 1851.
She succeeds Asit Saha, who served as Director General from 27 July 2024 to 31 July 2026.
She joined GSI in 1992 after a stint with the Indian Bureau of Mines and was most recently Additional Director General and Head of Department, Eastern Region, Kolkata.
A specialist in palaeontology and palynology, her research covers Late Cretaceous-Palaeocene sediments, the K-T boundary and the Satpura-Gondwana basins.
National agency for geoscientific surveys, mineral resource assessment and geological mapping
Palaeontology is the study of fossil organisms in general. Palynology is a specialised branch dealing with microscopic organic remains, principally pollen grains and spores, which survive in sediment in enormous numbers even where larger fossils are absent. Because different plant groups dominated at different periods, the pollen assemblage in a rock layer acts as a fingerprint for its age and for the climate at the time of deposition. This makes palynology central to dating sedimentary basins and, practically, to hydrocarbon and coal exploration.
Simple Analogy: Pollen grains work like dated postage stamps buried in the rock: identifying which ones are present tells you roughly when the layer was laid down.
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The study of pollen grains and spores preserved in sediment, used to date rock layers and reconstruct past climates.
The Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary, the geological horizon marking the mass extinction that ended the dinosaur era.
The ancient southern supercontinent; in Indian geology, also the name of a major sequence of sedimentary rocks rich in coal.
The organisation under the Ministry of Mines responsible for the conservation and scientific development of mineral resources.