Guwahati, March 30: A gamosa around its neck and with hands folded, the Namami Brahmaputra mascot, a xihu, as the Gangetic river dolphin in known in Assam, welcomes all to the festival.

The poster gives a happy picture but there is cause for worry as the dolphin population in the Brahmaputra has declined over the years. As the state pays tribute to the river over the next five days, starting tomorrow, environmentalists have called for an action plan for dolphin conservation.

"The government has not done anything substantial to conserve the xihu. There are not enough plants near the rivers, untreated sewage is dumped in the rivers everyday and proper awareness campaigns have not been launched to educate people on the dos and don'ts of conserving the xihu. The only thing the government has done is to declare the xihu the state aquatic animal and Guwahati city animal. Most of the conservation work is done by NGOs," said Abdul Wakid, programme leader of Gangetic Dolphin Research and Conservation Programme (GDRCP) of Aaranyak, an NGO, and a project scientist of the Wildlife Institute of India.

Wakid said a complete action plan was necessary to save the xihu, which is on Schedule-I of the endangered list of the Wildlife Protection Act. A survey conducted by him in 2004-2005 under the GDRCP found only 240 dolphins in the Brahmaputra river system, which compares poorly with a 1992-1993 survey which had found 266 dolphins. The Brahmaputra and its tributaries flow 2,700km in the state. The survey area (in 1992-1993 and 2004-2005) was 1,100km.

Environmentalists said the introduction of a proper action plan to conserve the biodiversity of the river was needed on the lines of Namami Gange.

Namami Brahmaputra, tagged as the country's biggest river festival which will be celebrated across the state's 21 districts through which the river flows, has often been compared with the Namami Gange Yojana which was started in 2014 to restore the Ganga.

"Namami Gange is an elaborate plan to restore the Ganga and covers all aspects from cleaning to maintaining the bio-diversity of the river. Governments in Assam have also launched a few awareness programmes for the Brahmaputra but there has not been any proper action plan. The government has not even conducted a proper survey of the river dolphin. Along with the festival and making the river navigable, it is necessary to conserve aquatic plants and animals. The government should have introduced the latest technology to survey the numbers and conduct research on the behaviour of the river dolphins," Jayaditya Purkayastha, general secretary of Help Earth, an NGO, told this correspondent today.

While introducing the festival, which will be an annual affair, the state government had vowed to make the mighty river navigable by dredging the river bed.

"Though the government has started Namami Brahmaputra to restore the river, we are not very hopeful," Wakid said.

State forest minister Pramila Rani Brahma told The Telegraph , "My department has not been informed about any bio-diversity conservation plans under the banner of Namami Brahmaputra. So far, it is only about how to make the river navigable again. I am, however, hopeful that some conservation work under the same banner will be started in the coming days."