Akhada activists clean Ganga ghats

Tribune News Service

Haridwar, November 4

Activists of Maa Ganga Aahwan Akhada today carried out a cleanliness drive near Har-ki-Pauri, during the closure of the Ganga canal.

As the canal is dried, the activists went into it and collected garbage, plastic material, polythene bags, clothes and other waste left after religious rituals.

Coordinator of the weekly cleanliness drive Pt Rameshwar said a majority of domestic waste, industrial effluents and religious rituals material were being poured into the sacred river, leading to massive pollution.

The Ganga Sabha, which gets revenue and donation worth millions of rupees annually, seemed to be non-serious about the cleaning of the river and the NGT directives as it had not initiated any cleanliness drive or taken steps to ensure that Har-ki-Pauri remained polythene bags and pollution free, he added.

On the forceful Ganga canal closure being done by the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department, which controls the canal operations leaving scant water at Har-ki-Pauri for over a month, Akhada activist JP Baduni cited the agreement of 1916 between Ganga Sabha-Indian dynastic rulers and British India Viceroy. He said the agreement was entered into during the British era to ensure sanctity and consistent flow of the Ganga, but now, when India was independent. The UPIrrigation Department was indulging in a gross violation of the historic treaty.

Activists Monu Tomar, Amrti Lal, Munna Thakur, Satya Narayan Sharma, Shiv Kumar, Prem Pal Yadav, Raju Jaiswal, Mintu Yadav, Anik Kumar Saini, Deepu Mehra, Bittu, Viki Yadav, Vikki Kalia, Pankaj Gupta, Rahul Kancha, Munna, Shravan Giri, Ashu Gupta, Ashok Navwani, Rajendra Joshi, Manoj Keshtwal, Gopal Giri, Vinit Sharma, Vikki Yadav, Ramesh Chaurasia, Avdesh Kumar, Ankit Rastogi, Roshanlal Pundir and Ram Sewak participated in the cleanliness drive.