 "Under the project, the Varanasi Development Authority is dismantling existing properties, including all commercial and residential structures, but preserving ancient temples in the 15,000-sqm area from Kashi Vishwanath to the ghats")
Vishwambhar Nath Mishra, 53, is a professor at the department of electronics engineering, Indian Institute of Technology-Banaras Hindu University, and one of the foremost critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Namami Gange’ project and the development work undertaken in Varanasi the past five years.
Mishra is also the mahant, or high priest, of Varanasi’s famous Sankat Mochan Hanuman temple, established in the 16th century by poet saint Goswami Tulsidas, the author of Ramacharitamanas.
Mishra also runs the Sankat Mochan Foundation that his father, Veer Bhadra Mishra, founded in the early 1980s with the objective of cleaning the Ganga. His father retired as
