By IANS
Lucknow : Hoping to rally its various factions and supporters for the first time on an environmental platform, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) will launch a 99-day ‘Save Ganga’ campaign as it held “rampant corruption” responsible for “unabated pollution” of the country’s most sacred river.
The rally will start from Gangasagar where the river merges into the sea and go all the way up to the river’s source at Gangotri.
One of the high points of the campaign will be Feb 17 when Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani and RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan will participate in a special yagna, or fire ritual, in Varanasi.
Advani is also expected to address a rally on the banks of the river that day.
Hindu clerics, including the four Shankaracharyas, yoga guru Swami Ramdev, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as well as Ramjanmbhoomi Trust president Mahant Nritya Gopal Das will join what the RSS has billed as the Ganga Sanskriti Pravah Yatra.
“The yatra is a part of the Ganga Mukti Abhiyan taken up by us as a mission to save the Ganga from further degradation,” Acharya Vishnu, national secretary of the RSS outfit Ganga Mahasabha, told IANS by phone from Varanasi.
He said “gross neglect and rampant corruption” at all levels in different state governments was largely responsible for the unabated pollution of the country’s most sacred river.
“We have reason to believe that billions of rupees have been pilfered in the name of ridding Ganga of pollution; this campaign is aimed at exposing this as well,” he added.
From Varanasi, the yatra will proceed to Allahabad, Kanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Rishikesh and move upstream to Devprayag, Tehri, Uttarkashi and finally Gangotri.