BJP and its Sangh Parivar make much of their commitment to the ‘sacred’ river Ganga. BJP’s Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pohkriyal Nishank once held a cabinet meeting on the banks of the Ganga to highlight their love for the river.

The reality behind this mask was exposed recently in a tragic incident in which Swami Nigamanand died in Uttarakhand after a 115-day fast in protest against rampant illegal sand mining and stone quarrying on the Ganga. The BJP State Government ignored Nigamanand’s fast and let the mining mafia of the state continue to rape the river. Nigamanand lay dying in the same hospital where Nishank, his government and the BJP made a great fuss over Ramdev.

Nigamanand had demanded that the state government stop a company from quarrying and mining in an 80-km stretch of the Ganga. A ban order by the government was passed but never enforced. The mining mafia is very influential in the state. The illegal quarrying and mining have caused river islands to vanish, the river bed to crack up, has polluted the river and affected river life. The BJP Government in Uttarakhand launched a much-advertised Sparsh Ganga Abhiyan (campaign for a clean Ganga) with Hema Malini as its brand ambassador – but allowed a man who was exposing the pollution and ruination of the river, to die on hunger strike.

A CAG report has found that the ‘Maha-kumbh’ recently held by the state government (for which Nishank was boasting that he deserved a Nobel) on the Ganga was a ‘maha-scam’ of 200 crore. Making a mockery of its promises to clean the Ganga, the organisers actually allowed tons of sewage to flow into the river during the Maha-kumbh!

There is even more evidence of the Uttarakhand Government’s complicity in the exploitation of the state’s precious rivers – which are a national asset. Following widespread outrage over corruption in the allotment of 56 contracts for hydropower projects to private companies, the state government recently had to cancel the allotments.

One major scam which prompted the HC to take intervene was the case of the government allowing a housing project by Sturdia Developers on industrial land of Citurgia Bio-chemicals in Rishikesh near the river Ganga, in blatant violation of environmental regulations. In this instance, the file for clearance moved at a miraculous speed, from the patwari to the CM’s desk in single day! The HC quashed the project and a judicial enquiry is on.