ITANAGAR:  Union Sports and Youth Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju on Wednesday flagged off the 917 km long “Brahmaputra Aamantran Abhiyaan”, a river rafting expedition and public outreach programme in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.

Rijiju in a tweet said: “The biggest river of our country, the mighty Brahmaputra, is known as Siang in Arunachal Pradesh. It enters our motherland India near Gelling. Joined ‘Brahmaputra Aamantran Abhiyaan’ at Tuting organised by the Ministry of Jal Shakti with the Government of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam & NDRF.”

The Union Minister launched the month long expedition, organised by the Brahmaputra Board under the Union Jal Shakti Ministry and supported by the Arunachal Pradesh and Assam governments and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), from the Mayum hanging bridge in Gelling under Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh.

The “Brahmaputra Aamantran Abhiyaan” was undertaken as part of the public outreach, encouraging the youths and students and also to popularise the concept of “living with the river”.

The expedition was embarked on by a team comprising members of the NDRF, officers of the Brahmaputra Board and scientists with the help of the tourism departments of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.

“A collective data collection and sampling exercise would also be done on river water quality, sediments, erosion and fish habitat along the entire 917 km route, in collaboration with various reputed institutes,” an official of the Guwahati based Brahmaputra Board said.

The rafting expedition would be done both in Arunachal Pradesh and in Assam’s Dhemaji district from Pasighat and would terminate in Mankachar district near the India-Bangladesh border on January 21.

The mighty Brahmaputra, one of the longest rivers in the world, flows from Tibet into Arunachal Pradesh, down to Assam and eventually Bangladesh.

IANS