Ganga Jal Biradri, an NGO has written to the minister of environment and forests to sign a memorandum of understanding to compensate the government if it dismantles the Loharinag Pala dam on the Ganga. In a letter written to Jairam Ramesh on March 7, 2010, Swami Avimukteshwaranad Saraswati and other members of Ganga Jal Biradri have demanded that the government should provide them with duly audited accounts since there is a great deal of confusion over the amount actually spent on this particular dam thus far.

In an all India Ganga Yamuna Panchayat held in New Delhi from February 8-10, 2010, Ramesh had said that the dam cannot be scrapped because Rs 1,000 crore have already been spent on it. It was then that Saraswati had said that he would lead a fund raising campaign through the All India Ganga Jalbiradari to recompense the Government to the full extent of Rs 1,000 crore that the government claims to have spent on the Loharinag Pala project, if the Government agreed to dismantle the dam.

Madhu Purnima Kishwar of Manushi, who was a part of the panchayat said that this letter had been written as a follow up of the panchayat in Delhi. “Since then, there has been no initiative by the government, so we thought that we needed to remind them,” she said.

The flow of a river is its life and once the flow of Ganga is stopped, its as good as dead, said Saraswati. “It is not difficult to accumulate Rs 1,000 crore for the Ganga. Almost Rs 50 crore have already pledged by various individuals,” he said. Saraswati has said that we have given assurance to the government that we will pay our instalments on time and if we are not able to pay them then you can start work on the dam the very next day.