Commander Sureshwar Sinha was an Indian Navy veteran & environmentalist Commander Sureshwar Dhari Sinha, an Indian Navy veteran and environmentalist who played a crucial role in petitioning the Supreme Court in a matter concerning flow of water in the Yamuna, passed away at his home in Delhi on Sunday.
He was 88, and had been unwell for the past couple of years. Sinha, who was from Bihar, was commissioned in the Indian Navy in 1954, and was the Commanding Officer of INS Kadmatt, an anti-submarine ship, in the late 1960s. He retired in the 1970s and set up a business making transistor chips.
An activist, he tried to draw attention to the state of the rivers, particularly the Yamuna and the Ganga, said C Uday Bhasker, his son-in-law. “He set up his own NGO called Paani Morcha… he was the chairman. They used to work here in Delhi and in Bihar. As he grew older, he was not able to sustain the NGO, and it is now not particularly active. He was also against a lot of the dams and diversions that were being done,” Bhasker said.
He added: “He (Sinha) was a sailor… when he was sailing in Delhi, they used to sail in Okhla. In those days, he used to be very distressed about the quality of water. That triggered his interest — month after month, he would see what was happening. Water hyacinth would make it impossible to sail.”
Manoj Misra, convenor, Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan, said, “For us, he was the grand old river warrior. The first real Supreme Court case for the Yamuna was filed by him, and he did it single-handedly. He had no lawyer to represent him. This was a case which, for the first time, asked for e-flow in the river. It was the case in which the Supreme Court directed that a minimum of 10 cumecs must be there in the river throughout. It was a very impactful piece of work, though later on, he focused more on Ganga. He was one of the founder members of the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan and one of our patrons.”
“He had seen the river in better health. When he came back to Delhi after retirement, the kind of river he saw shocked him,” Misra added.
Manu Bhatnagar, Principal Director of the Natural Heritage Division, INTACH, said, “In 1994, he was instrumental in getting the judgment from the Supreme Court which ensured that Haryana had to maintain drinking water supply of Delhi. Thereafter, he formed an organisation, Paani Morcha, through which he continued to fight for water resources and sensible environmental resource management in the Himalayas. Since we both worked on water resources, we got together and he had also made me an official of Paani Morcha.”
Sinha is survived by three daughters and a son. Actor Swara Bhasker is his granddaughter.