Ballia

Ballia is a city with a municipal board in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The eastern boundary of the city lies at the junction of two major rivers, the Ganges and the Ghaghara.The city is situated east of Varanasi and about 380 km from the state capital Lucknow. It has a protected area, the Jai Prakash Narayan bird sanctuary. Ballia is also around away from Bihar. The name Ballia is an ancligised spelling of Hindi Baliyā (Devanagari: बलिया). According to Paul Whalley, the name is derived from the personal name Bali along with the suffix -ā. The "y" in the name is a glide inserted between the vowels to make it easier to pronounce; the resulting similarity to the diminutive suffix -iyā is only coincidental. According to locals, the name Ballia was derived from the name of the sage Valmiki, the author of Ramayana. Valmiki resided here at one point, and the place was commemorated by a shrine (although it has long since been washed away). Another belief about the origin of the name is that it refers to the sandy quality of the soil, locally known as "Ballua" (balu meaning sand). Ballia district is the easternmost part of the Uttar Pradesh state and borders on Bihar State. It comprises an irregularly shaped tract extending westward from the confluence of the Ganga and the Ghaghra, the former separating it from Bihar in the south and the latter from Deoria and Bihar in the north and east respectively. The boundary between Ballia and Bihar is determined by the deep streams of these two rivers. It is bounded on the west by Mau, on the north by Deoria, on the north-east and south-east by Bihar and on the south-west by Ghazipur. The district lies between the parallels of 25o33' and 26o11' North latitudes and 83o38' and 84o39' East longitudes. Ballia is among the least forest covered districts in India List of cities in Uttar Pradesh In 1901, Ballia had a population of 15,278. According to the 2001 Indian census, Ballia had a population of 102,226. Males constituted 54% of the population and females 46%.