Bakreshwar

Bakreshwar is another of the Pithas. It also has hot springs. Bakreshwar is the site of a large upcoming thermal power plant.

According to Hindu belief, an insulted Sati, the wife of Lord Shiva, sacrificed herself at an yagna which was being performed by her father Dakshmaharaj. Angry with this incident Lord Shiva started the tandava nritya (a dance of destruction). This forced Lord Vishnu to use his Sudershan chakra to cut the body of Sati into several places. Sati's body was thus scattered all over what is presently the Indian subcontinent. There are 51 such holy spots where temples have been erected and they are called Pithas or the Shakti Pithas. Some of the Pithas are in West Bengal. The most popular of them are Kalighat (in Calcutta), Bakreshwar and TARAPITH.

An audiomagnetotelluric (AMT) study has been carried out in the Bakreswar Hot Spring (BHS) area of eastern India to locate the geothermal source in the vicinity of BHS. Phase-tensor analysis of the AMT data shows that the region is broadly 2D. Rapid relaxation inversion (RRI) for both transverse-electric (TE) and transverse-magnetic (TM) modes has been carried out to obtain resistivity images of the subsurface. AMT results show that the north-south fault close to Bakreswar is a shallow feature, not deeper than 300 m, and thus cannot act as a heat source. The subsurface formation below the fault zone is highly resistive up to a great depth, indicating the absence of a heat source and geothermal reservoir in the vicinity of the BHS. AMT results indicate that the location of the geothermal reservoir is deep and lies beyond the profiles of measurement in the northwestern side of the Bakreswar Hot Spring.