Congress to launch huge campaign to conserve Narmada river, lifeline of Madhya Pradesh
BHOPAL: With just around four months left for the next assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, the opposition Congress is set to embark on a massive campaign for purging and conserving river Narmada – which is considered the lifeline of the central Indian state.
The Kamal Nath-led party in the state has decided to form a Narmada Seva Sena, headed by senior party leader Bhupendra Gupta (who heads the grand old party’s research cell in the state) and coordinated by Vikram Mastal Sharma, who enacted the role of Lord Hanuman in Anand Sagar’s ‘Ramayana.’
Vikram, who hails from CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s assembly constituency Budhni (Sehore) – located on the banks of river Narmada – joined the grand old party in Chhindwara on July 4.
This will perhaps be the first time in the country that any political party will embark on a massive campaign to purge and conserve a major river ahead of elections.
According to sources in the knowhow of the entire campaign, under the state-level apex Narmada Seva Sena campaign committee, a large number of local committees will be formed across the river’s 1077-km stretch in MP, between the river’s origin in Amarkantak (Anuppur district) and Barwani and Alirajpur districts.
Under the campaign, regular Narmada aartis and associated religious rituals will be performed by the Congress’s Narmada Seva Sena at multiple places on the banks of the river, starting from the Sethani Ghat in Narmadapuram district.
The Sena will also undertake the duty of keeping all the ghats on the riverbank across the river clean. The Sena which will be associated with experts will also test the river water’s quality across its 1077 km stretch in MP and identify the places where the river water isn’t potable (worth drinking).
Various points where the sewage and nullahs (drains) are found flowing into the sacred river will be identified, followed by the Congress putting pressure on the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government to put an end to such free-flowing nullahs and sewers.
The campaign will also see the Congress’s Sena identify those points where industrial waste/effluents are freely flowing into the river Narmada, besides areas where there is rampant sand mining in the river, putting the river and its aquatic wealth at grave risk.
Once these points are identified, the opposition party is expected to launch a massive movement to force the BJP government to put an end to the free flow of effluents into the river through effluent treatment plants and also end sand mining in the river.
A key part of the entire campaign is to encourage tree plantation on both banks of the river across the state.
Sources associated with the exercise also informed this newspaper that a major plan is afoot to ensure that people who plant these trees own those plants throughout their lives.