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Haridwar flooded with waste after record Kanwar influx
The Kanwar Yatra, attracting over 40 million devotees, ends with a massive waste challenge, prompting Haridwar officials to deploy 1,000 sanitation workers
The annual Kanwar Yatra, which witnessed a footfall of over 40 million devotees, will end on Wednesday on the occasion of Shravan Shivratri. However, the unprecedented rush left behind a mountain of garbage, with the Haridwar district administration having deployed over 1,000 additional sanitation workers to clean the city and surrounding areas of thousands of tonnes of waste.
Officials from the Haridwar Municipal Corporation estimate that the total waste generated during the fortnight-long mela could be between 30,000 and 35,000 metric tonnes. While cleaning operations are underway, authorities admit that it may take several days or even weeks to fully restore cleanliness across the city and pilgrimage routes.
According to data from the Kanwar mela control room, more than 40 million Kanwariyas have visited Haridwar since July 11 to collect holy Ganga water to offer to Lord Shiva. The peak influx occurred in the final days leading up to Shravan Shivratri, when tens of thousands of devotees were still entering the city even as others began departing. By Tuesday evening, the majority had departed, but the trail of waste left behind poses a major logistical and environmental crisis.
Haridwar municipal commissioner Nandan Kumar said that over 1,000 additional sanitation workers have been deployed from various sectors for the clean-up effort during the Kanwar Mela.
“Civic and sanitation workers are working round the clock, especially at Ganga ghats and across the mela zone. In lines of Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami’s vision for a clean and green Kanwar fair, we’ve maintained ongoing cleanliness drives, but the full scale of the clean-up will only become clear after the yatra officially ends,” Kumar said.
He added that the data on the exact amount of waste collected will be compiled and released by Wednesday afternoon, once the final group of Kanwariyas depart.
Despite the accumulation of waste, some pilgrims and locals acknowledged improvements in garbage collection compared to previous years. However, they also stressed the need for public awareness and better access for waste disposal vehicles, especially in crowded zones.
Teerth purohit Pradeep Jha said, “While lakhs of Kanwariyas are present at any given moment, it becomes difficult for garbage trucks to enter the narrow and crowded ghat areas. Instead of solely relying on sanitation teams, we must educate pilgrims to avoid littering.”
Local resident Arun Ohri said that though the rains helped wash away some of the garbage, he warned that had it not been for the rain, the situation might have been worse. “There are heaps of waste near the public toilets, parking areas, highways, and especially along the Kanwar route,” he said.
Environmentalists and civic experts have called for immediate and long-term interventions.
Anup Nautiyal, founder of Social Development for Communities Foundation, emphasised the need to involve professional waste management agencies, NGOs, and corporate CSR arms for scalable and sustainable clean-up operations.
“Unless Uttarakhand scales up its infrastructure and collaborates with experienced players in the waste domain, the state risks being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of trash generated by crores of annual pilgrims,” Nautiyal said.
