ALLAHABAD: The district administration of Allahabad organised an event called "run for river Ganga", on Saturday.
The event, for making the denizens aware of how to contribute for keeping the river clean, was organised at the main gate of the
Company garden on Saturday morning. Attended by large number of children, youngsters and even some elders, the run was flagged off by the state minister for civil aviation Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi in the presence of city mayor
Abhilasha Gupta.
The race also witnessed participation of several eminent persons of the city including Rajendra Tripathi, who is famous for his mustache dance which has also earned him getting his name registered in Guinness book of world records.
Led by a group of young skaters, the participants ran for around 6 kms, starting from the main gate of Company garden to
Hanuman temple crossing and passing through all saint cathedral, it returned to the starting point through Tashkant road.
However, at the time when large number of people, including eminent personalities of the city were busy making the event a grand success, few kilometers from the venue, TOI visited the ghats of river Ganga and witnessed the filth and garbage littered all around.
The brazen attitude of the devotees and pilgrims could be seen by the fact that despite the authorities placing dustbins at several points in the vast Sangam area, people were seen throwing garbage, hairs, items disposed after puja etc around the bin which was empty. Same was the situation near the banks wherein people had left over garland, polythene, plastic bottles etc after performing their rituals.
Commenting on the sorry tale of affairs, city mayor said, "It is not that the authorities are not catering to the garbage and filth that is generated at Sangam area but there is lot to be done with the civic sense of the denizens who often do not use the facilities provided by us and infact this was the motive for organizing such event."
