It was a Sunday with a green and clean mission for the steel city.

From lawmakers and senior bureaucrats to Scouts, students and citizen volunteers, thousands took up basic tasks such as planting saplings, digging soak pits and check dams and cleaning river banks.

Around 10am, Jamshedpur MP Bidyut Baran Mahto led a team of enthusiasts, including East Singhbhum DC Ravi Shankar Shukla, SSP Anoop Birtharay, chairperson of Jharkhand State Women’s Commission Kalyani Sharan, Jamshedpur East MLA (CM Raghubar Das) representative Pawan Agarwal and zilla parishad members Bullu Rani Singh and Rajkumar Singh to the Situ Talab in Telco’s ISWP township to plant saplings near the water body, joining people from across the state in greening and water conservation activities.

The Jamshedpur MP and the others planted neem, mango and teak (sagwan) saplings near the pond.

The district administration has already taken up cleanliness activities for the upkeep of the pond in Telco.

Praising the Centre’s Jal Shakti Abhiyan that’s running this monsoon through citizen participation — which Jharkhand’s Van Mahotsav-cum-Nadi Mahotsav aligns with — Mahto said rainwater conservation was linked organically to planting trees.

“It is our collective responsibility to think of our water and conserve water . We will have to take the Jal Shakti Abhiyan to the very grassroots,” the Jamshedpur MP said, adding on a task-based, result-oriented agenda to help safeguard the lives of the coming generations.

Earlier in the morning, East Singhbhum deputy commissioner Ravi Shankar Shukla as well as other bureaucrats started his Sunday by planting saplings on the premises of the district collectorate in Sakchi. Shukla also made officials at SDO office pledge to work for water conservation.

“Jal Shakti Abhiyan will only be successful when each one of us contributes to the campaign and does specific tasks to save water for the time to come. I urge all residents of the district to come forward as volunteers,” the DC said.

These two events apart, around 300 volunteers from various strata of society — corporate professionals, social workers and school students — pitched in to clean up the banks of the Subernarekha at Sonari from 6pm.

Representatives of Tata Steel, Tata Power, Tata Steel subsidiary Jusco, Beyond Fitness, Inner Wheel Club of Jamshedpur and Valley View School, who trooped to the Subernarekha beneath Domuhani bridge, cleaned the area for nearly two hours.

At the end of their efforts, the volunteers had collected about 12.5 tonnes of waste.