Agra (Samajweekly) Ahead of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s visit to Agra on Wednesday, river activists on Tuesday evening demanded urgent action to construct a barrage on Yamuna to protect the Taj Mahal from pollution.
Members of the River Connect Campaign protested and raised slogans at the Etmauddaula view point, to draw the Chief Minister’s attention towards a dying river.
In the past three decades, foundation stones for the barrage have been laid thrice by two Chief Ministers and one Governor. But the project has never come out of the files.
Environmentalist Devashish Bhattacharya said the UP irrigation department responding to his RTI query has informed that NOCs from three different departments had been received, only one permission was hanging fire.
From 2018 to 2023, the irrigation department received Rs 182 crore, out of which Rs 176 crore had been returned, as the barrage project made no headway.
The department has now come up with a fresh proposal for a Rs 350 crore Rubber Check dam, downstream of the Taj Mahal, at Nagla Prema.
The Yamuna barrage project was mooted first in 1993, after a series of directions from the Supreme Court, in a PIL filed by M.C. Mehta. The apex court had stated that along with the cleaning of the river, a barrage should be constructed to bring down the air pollution level in the vicinity of the Taj Mahal.
While the local politicians kept pulling in different directions, giving rise to controversies, the beneficiary was Mathura which got the Gokul barrage in 1997.
Over years, the Yamuna dries up after the monsoon rains, and degenerates into a vast sewage canal. Garbage dumps, shallow pools of polluted water become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and bacteria. The white marble surface of the Taj gets dotted with colonies of mosquitoes and their excreta.
Lok Swar President Rajiv Gupta wonders why successive state governments have been dragging their feet on executing such a vital project.
The river remains dry, polluted and sick with toxic waste, says Eco Club President Pradip Khandelwal.
