Course correction of Saraswati ‘revival’

Vishal Joshi

Tribune News Service 

Kurukshetra, January 30

More than a year after work began on the ambitious Saraswati rejuvenation project, the Manohar Lal Khattar Government seems to have done a course correction. Realising that the river’s revival was “impossible”, the panel formed for the task has changed the project’s target from “river rejuvenation” to “flowing rainwater into the conventional Saraswati drain round the year”.

Haryana Saraswati Heritage Development Board Deputy Chairman Prashant Bhardwaj said, “One cannot create glaciers to rejuvenate a mighty river like the Saraswati. So, revival is impossible. But it is possible to construct a water channel and feed it with rainwater.”

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Bhardwaj said the Haryana authorities had identified 150 natural depressions in various parts, which would be used to feed the Saraswati channel from Adi Badri in Yamunanagar to Sirsa. These low-lying spots, he said, were over 50 acres in area and rainwater accumulated there would be channeled into the already existing channel.

Besides, check dams in the catchment area of Somb, a rain-fed river in Yamunanagar, would be used to feed the channel, which had “religious sanctity”, he said. Bhardwaj said there was also a proposal to connect the channel with Sharda river that flowed near the India-Nepal border. He claimed a section of researchers who “believed” in British ideology had been disputing the existence of the Saraswati to rubbish the traditionally rich Vedic culture. “Rig Veda and several ancient scriptures mention the Saraswati as a mighty river, which dried up due to natural reasons more than 5,000 years ago.” 

It was in May 2015 that workers noticed water gushing out of a pit during the excavation of Saraswati channel at Muglawali village in Yamunanagar. Dubbing it as a paleo channel of the erstwhile Saraswati that found mention in the Rig Veda, the government then announced to “rejuvenate the river”.

Headed by Chief Minister Khattar himself, the Saraswati development board had made elaborate plans to promote religious tourism and use the drain to recharge underground water in the region.