Ganga dredging in Prayagraj ‘environmental crime’, says SP chief Akhilesh

PTI, Jan 8, 2025, 11:35 AM IST

Lucknow: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday termed the Ganga’s dredging in Prayagraj an “environmental crime” to grant contracts to a select group of people to earn money through corruption.

The Kannauj MP shared on X a news clip of dredging in the Ganga for the Maha Kumbh.

“History has been a witness that rivers create their own paths. This natural flow is a self-made path for the continuity of rivers. Accepting this geographical truth, tampering with the flow of rivers is an environmental crime,” he said in the post accompanying the clip.

“The purpose of installing dredgers in the Ganga during the Prayagraj Maha Kumbh is only to give contracts to their own people and earn money from them through corruption,” he added, without taking any names.

Where the rivers will meet should be left to nature, doing arbitrary things and forcibly changing the flow is both inappropriate and undesirable, he also said.

“Doing so will have a bad effect on the biology of the aquatic life and natural ecological balance of the Ganga,” he added.

The Maha Kumbh will begin on January 13 and conclude on February 26.