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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 in its 176-year history.
She succeeds Asit Saha, who served as Director General from 27 July 2024 to 31 July 2026.
A palaeontology and palynology specialist, she joined GSI in 1992 after service with the Indian Bureau of Mines.
She was previously Additional Director General and Head of Department, Eastern Region, Kolkata.
Premier national geoscientific agency; creates and updates national geoscientific data, assesses mineral resources and conducts fundamental geological research. An attached office of the Ministry of Mines
Body under the Ministry of Mines responsible for the conservation and systematic development of mineral resources and mine inspection
Palaeontology is the study of fossils; palynology is the study of pollen grains and spores preserved in sediment. Palynology is unusually powerful in dating rock because pollen is produced in enormous quantities, is highly resistant to decay, and changes as plant communities change — so a pollen assemblage acts as a fingerprint for a particular time and environment. The K-T boundary, more correctly the Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary, is the layer marking the mass extinction about 66 million years ago in which the non-avian dinosaurs disappeared. In India that boundary is bound up with the Deccan Traps, the vast volcanic eruptions that occurred around the same time, which is why Indian work on Late Cretaceous-Palaeocene sediments is of international interest. The Gondwana basins, including the Satpura basin, are the sedimentary sequences that hold most of India's coal.
Simple Analogy: Fossils tell you which animals lived there; pollen tells you what the landscape looked like and, because plants change faster, roughly what year it was.
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The national geoscientific agency established in 1851, an attached office of the Ministry of Mines, headquartered at Kolkata.
The study of pollen grains and spores, used to date and reconstruct ancient environments.
The Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary marking the mass extinction of about 66 million years ago.
Sedimentary basins of peninsular India that contain the bulk of the country's coal reserves.
An organisation under a ministry responsible for executing that ministry's policies, with a degree of functional autonomy.