Manjeera Bachao: Green crusader’s mission to save river Manjeera

Gnaneshwar planted 1,000 trees at Edupayala Temple in Medak district besides throwing 8,000 seed balls along the river bank with the support of the forest department. He along with some volunteers collected a tractor load of plastic in the river Manjeera at Edupayala in a day.

Sangareddy: To make river Manjeera clean and the water safe for drinking, a young green crusader from Sangareddy district, Gnaneshwar Paldugu (27), a resident of Mukthapur in Nagulgidda mandal, launched the “Manjeera Bachao” campaign in 2016. Since then, he has been spending at least 50 days on cleaning the Manjeera river, planting trees on the river banks and educating students and villagers living along the river course in Telangana and Karnataka.

Making school children participate in his activities is one of the important parts because it would leave a great impact on the younger generation. River Manjeera has been an inseparable part of Gnaneshwar’s life. Since the river is located just 5 km away from Mukthapur, which in turn is just 8 km from the Karnataka border, Gnaneshwar used to regulary visit the serene Manjeera, which was the only source of drinking water for Hyderabad and Sangareddy back then.

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As the years passed on, Gnaneshwar’s love for the river grew manifold since he saw closely how the lives of the people living alongside the river would change when the river came alive. When he saw plastic thrown every year in the river and erosion of the river due to felling of trees, it hurt him. However, he resolved to clean the river and launched Manjeera Bachao in 2016. After noticing the soil erosion along the river course at Chillarigi in Bidar district of Karnataka, he planted 200 trees and educated the villagers on the need of protecting the river from soil erosion. Gnaneshwar planted 1,000 trees at Edupayala Temple in Medak district as well besides throwing 8,000 seed balls along the river bank with the support of the Forest department.

He along with some volunteers collected a tractor load of plastic in the river Manjeera at Edupayala in a day. Gnaneshwar also visited Chamundeshwari Devi Temple in Chitkul temple, located on the banks of Manjeera, and cleaned up the premises besides educating devotees on not to dump plastic. The green crusader also delivered a lecture to officials of Bidar on the need to conserve the river Manjeera in 2022. Last Thursday, Gnaneshwar was seen collecting the plastic from river Manjeera at a check dam near Shivvampet in Sangareddy district.

Speaking to Telangana Today, Gnaneshwar urged the government to constitute a board to keep the river and its tributaries clean. The pollution of the water would not only harm the people consuming it regularly, but would also harm the entire ecosystem of the river. Gnaneshwar appealed to the Telangana government to take up plantation along the river course besides banning the dumping of plastic. The green crusader asked the government to form a committee to study how it was getting polluted and what measures need to be taken to free the river from pollution and soil erosion. He lamented that the villages living along the river course were dumping the waste collected from the villages in the river, causing great damage to the ecosystem.