Rawat launches mission to revive Doon’s Rispana river

Chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Saturday launched the much-hyped mission to rejuvenate Rispana, the once gurgling river that passed through Dehradun but has now been reduced to a drainage for the heavily populated town.

As part of the mission, people pitched in to dig the pits at different spots in the town and its nearby areas along the Rispana as part of a soon-to-begin plantation drive to rejuvenate the river.

Speaking at different places in the town, Rawat said the mission to rejuvenate the Rispana and Kosi (Almora) is not confined to the two rivers but will be spread across the mountain state. “Realising that drive would become easier, if the youth in the entire state make a firm resolve that they have to conserve the rivers, streams and other water bodies in their respective areas,” he said.

Rawat said conserving the Rispana and Kosi is not an official programme and stressed the need to transform it into a social movement. “I felt encouraged form the way the people — from children to youths to senior citizens participated in this mission. I am now confident that the mission to conserve the two rivers will acquire the shape of a full-fledged social movement,” he said.

The CM hoped that the streams like the Rispana and Bindal that have dried up over the years would be restored to their original shape. On the occasion, he directed chief secretary Utpal Kumar Singh to consider setting up some meeting points in the town for the people to gather and cumulatively carry out the plantation drive. Rawat suggested that transportation facilities could be provided at those meeting points so that people could be ferried to areas where they could carry out planting of saplings.

Dehradun district magistrate S Murugeshan said under the mission to revive the Rispana some 2.5 lakhs pits will be dug by people from Shikhar Fall — the spot from where the river originates — right up to the Mothrowala-Daurwala area of Dehradun by June end.

He said more than 40 government and non-government organizations participated in the launch of the mission to revive the Rispana. “That apart, some eight to ten thousand volunteers including students from different schools and the common people participated in the programme,” the district magistrate said.

According to him, the organisations that participated in the programme included the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), the forest department and the Eco-Task Force (ETF), among others.