The professor literally took a class of district magistrate Pranjal Yadav and officials of forest, irrigation, UP Jal Nigam and Varanasi Development Authority (VDA) for nearly one hour at his residence on Monday. He elaborated up on the areas of problem and suggested corrective measures. It may be recalled here that the DM has formed a committee comprising engineers of government departments and experts from IIT-BHU for the study of the Ganga so that the threat of caving in of signature ghats could be averted. A research scholar of BHU with the help of Central Water Commission (CWC) was started the survey for the profiling of river on November 20.

While explaining the problem Choudhary said that a substantial stretch of ghats in Manikarnika, the great cremation ghat, is facing serious threat of caving in, and this stretch of ghats may submerge in Ganga by 2020-25 if no corrective measure is taken. According to him, the only solution to save the historic ghats on the concave bank of Ganga is to manage sand bed, which is increasing gradually, on the convex bank of the river. "We will have to manage the sand bed on convex bank and do bolder pitching of the eroded pockets on the concave bank to save our ghats," said Choudhary. It may be mentioned here that the sand mining is prohibited along the 7km stretch of Ganga in Varanasi due to presence of tortoise sanctuary from the Ramnagar Fort to Rajghat.

When the DM sought suggestion for the shifting of tortoise sanctuary from the present location, the division forest officer, Kashi wildlife area GP Singh pointed out that it is not possible to shift the sanctuary. At this point Choudhary suggested that a survey should be conducted to demarcate the specific sand area that causes problem and remove sand as per requirement. It was agreed to prepare a proposal after detailed study and send it to the wildlife department for consideration.