Cleaning drive
Cleaning drive in Chakrashila Wildlife Sanctuary. Image - Northeast Now

Baukhungri is a beautiful natural scenic site which falls under the Chakrashila Wildlife Sanctuary surrounded with beautiful hills, streams, forest, various medicinal herbs, various unique vegetables, various species, animals, etc.

It is also one of the biodiversity hotspots of Kokrajhar.

This is the hotspot where the youths and adults use to go in leisure time and hangout there by carrying various eating stuff unlike packaged chips, drinks of various kind and leave those there itself without questioning themselves what would be the causes of all such action to the environment.

And to clean up the hill, a group of students and passed-out students came out and recently cleaned up the Baukhungri.

Talking to Northeast Now, Morin Daimary, a social activist of Kokrajhar said, “We, the youths from various parts of the BTAD region and the students, who have been purusing post-graduation, masters degree, PhD in various institution across the State as well as the country joined hands to clean up Baukhungri in Chakrashila Wildlife Sanctuary.”

He said that they had come together and conducted a cleaning drive at Baokungri hill, which is known for every one and the Baokungri hills too.

Daimary said they decided to celebrate the International Youth Day by carrying out a cleaning drive in the morning.

Cleaning drive
Cleaning drive in Chakrashila Wildlife Sanctuary. Image – Northeast Now
Cleaning drive in Chakrashila Wildlife Sanctuary. Image – Northeast Now

On August 12, 2018 on the day of the International Youth Day, despite heavy rain, a group of youth led by Daiji Basumatary, a Masters Degree passed-out student of Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, Tamil Nadu gathered near the Fine Art College, Kokrajhar and started moving towards the destination with bamboo stick and sage in hands and met the Harinaguri High School students, who were not even intimated officially as already it was late due to heavy rain.

The students of the school were were very enthusiastic and started asking to start the activity and in the right moment, Bodoland Tourism, Forests Department officials reached on the spot with a vehicle.

“We arranged the locally available materials and gave instructions to the school students how to collect and segregate the garbage and then alone with children and the Bodoland Tourism Department staff and some youths of our team and locality started collecting waste in the down of the hill simply with bamboo sticks and within a few minutes tones of wastes including various kind of wine bottles, plastic bottles, various plastic materials were collected,” said Daimary.

“We even segregated those on the spot and lot more energetic youths arrived with hand gloves and started collecting more wastes during the cleanliness drive. Some energetic students of various organizations, institutes and colleges of Kokrajhar and other parts of the district joined this long cleanup event and made the event happening,” he added.

The same group also organized an cleanliness drive at Jharnagar Stream on July 31, 2018 to serve mother Earth. Led by Kansai Brahma of TISS Mumbai passed-out student with the motto “If we make pollution than it’s every individual’s responsibility to cleanup”.

“It’s every individual’s responsibility to pinch people who throw in front of you and we should have guts to make realized what we are doing to our environment,” added Daimary.

Rinoy Basumatary is Northeast Now Correspondent in Kokrajhar. He can be reached at: [email protected]