Green carpet laid on Falgu riverbed for Gaya pilgrims

Gaya: Ever heard of a living river being carpeted. This has happened in Gaya as a long stretch of green carpet has been laid on the river bed east to west, ostensibly to protect Pitrapaksha Mela pilgrims from sand fury.
Lakhs of Hindu devotees visit Gaya every year during the month of Pitripaksha for performing ‘pindadaan’ ritual to seek salvation of the soul of their ancestors.According to Panda leader Mahesh Guput, Falgu is a cursed river and nobody other than Goddess Sita cursed the river for lying to Lord Ram during his visit to the place for the performance of ‘pindadaan’ ritual for her departed father king Dasrath. It happened during Lord Ram’s exile in the forests.
Environmental science experts believe that Falgu mostly flows sub- surface and a huge quantity of water is stored in a bowl like formation deep down the river- bed. Residents of Gaya depend on this ‘stored’ water for their daily requirements and this water is pumped out with the help of high power machines installed at different points between Dandibagh and Panchaiti Akhara areas of the town.
“Though Falgu has been mostly a dry river, things have never been so bad,” says Lalji Prasad, a former member of the Empowered Committee (Sashakt Samiti) of the Gaya Municipal Corporation.
He added, “Earlier, there used to be patches of water here and there till winter. The present crisis is man made. For years, Gaya Municipal Corporation (GMC) dumped the municipal waste in the river. The practice has now been discontinued. But the damage has already been done.”
Falgu Bachao activist Brajnandan Pathak says that not only municipal waste, debris of the demolished buildings and other construction waste have also been dumped in the river thereby affecting the porosity of the river surface and its capacity to absorb, retain and store water.
“Several tonnes of concrete constructions have piled up on both sides of Falgu between Bodh Gaya and Bitho villages. Despite High Court order, the river encroachment has not been removed,” Pathak said.
Prem Kumar, the seven time Gaya town MLA and state agriculture minister has been demanding the inter-linking of Falgu with Ganga by pumping out water from Ganga near Fatuha with an estimated outlay of around Rs 1000 crore. “A detailed project report (DPR) for the river linking project was being made and the CM too was now agreeable,” says Kumar. For several years, the minister locked horns with his party colleague and former MP Hari Manjhi. Hari Manjhi wanted Falgu to be linked with Sone river and not Ganga as proposed by Kumar.
Ex- CM Jitan Ram Manjhi cleared the proposal to make a low height barrage near Bitho village to end Falgu’s dry run. According to Manjhi, the barrage plan was scuttled by his predecessor-cum-successor Nitish Kumar.