Agra: Members of the River Connect Campaign will draw the attention of the state and the union government towards the sad plight of the Yamuna river, by organizing a mass kite flying event on Makar Sankranti.

Special kites with messages will fly in the sky. “Hundreds of men, women, and children will be in action on the river bed, opposite the Etmauddaula tomb, also called Baby Taj,” Pandit Jugal Kishore Shrotriya, programme organizer said. This event is being annually organized since 2014, he added.

River activists and environmentalists have demanded urgent steps to revive Yamuna, the lifeline of  Braj Mandal, by launching a continuous river cleaning programme.

At a meeting held Monday evening at the Etmauddaula View Point park on the bank of Yamuna, members of the River Connect Campaign said the chief cause of air pollution in the eco-sensitive Taj Trapezium Zone, was the dry and polluted Yamuna river bed. "Dust from Yamuna is directly harming the fragile marble structure of the Taj Mahal. Its polluted waters have become the breeding ground of mosquitoes that fly and leave their green excreta on the surface of the Taj Mahal," said environmentalist Devashish Bhattacharya.

Rahul Raj,  a green activist, lamented that the union minister Nitin Gadkari had promised to start a ferry service in Yamuna to bring tourists to Agra from Delhi. But so far not a step had been taken in this direction. "The river bed is to be de-silted and garbage scooped out," he said.

Activists said, “these politicians are neither concerned about human life, nor alarmed by reports of extensive damage to the historical monuments along Yamuna's banks.”

Goswami Nandan Shrotriya said the issue of a barrage on Yamuna, downstream of the Taj Mahal, has been hanging fire for three decades. The Yogi Adityanath government should now waste no more time in starting work on the barrage project, he added.

The Yamuna in Agra has become a sprawling burial ground for idols and pooja samigri after a series of festivals. "Since there is hardly any freshwater being released in the river, the liquid flowing down is essentially industrial effluents, sewage, and municipal waste. This toxic liquid is hurting the foundations of historical buildings, in addition to adding to visual pollution," Deepak Rajput said.

The objective of the kite-flying event was to bring the people of Agra to the river that they had forgotten. “When the citizens come down and see for themselves how a living heritage, a lifeline of the city, was being murdered through callous neglect, questions shall be asked and the ten BJP legislators and three MPs will be pressured to take appropriate remedial action,” Dinesh Sharma said.