Pejawar mutt chief Vishwesha Teertha Swamiji Thursday asked his disciple and Union Minister Uma Bharti to "balance between her work and her passion" while taking up the issue of clean Ganga.
The octogenerian pontiff said he has heard that Bharti, handling the portfolio of Drinking Water and Sanitation, has decided to camp on the banks of the Ganga every night for one-and-a-half years.
He said he appreciated the vow and offered his blessings for her "sacred intention."
"However, my instructions to her would be to take a flexible stance towards her pledge. She should be spending maximum time on the banks of the Ganga, but she has to also respect the call of duty," the Udupi-based mutt swamiji said in a statement.
She should be ready to break her vow with the Ganga only for the sake of work when her presence is important elsewhere.
"I feel she should balance herself between her work and her passion as she is a Karmayogi," the seer said.
Announcing her decision not to contest the next Lok Sabha elections, Bharti said recently that she would set out on a 2,500-km yatra (pilgrimage) along the Ganga on foot from Makar Sankranti in January next year for nearly one-and-a-half years by "leaving power."
"I believe that one has to go to the banks of the Ganga river by leaving power and I am doing so for next one-and-a-half years. But I will be campaigning and would do politics till my last and that too with energy," Bharti said.
Bharti, who had accepted the Pejawar mutt chief as her Guru, is currently taking the initiative for the felicitation programme to celebrate completion of eight decades of the seers initiation to asceticism to be held at Sri Krishna mutt in neighbouring Udupi district on December 27.
President Ram Nath Kovind, Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, Nagaland governor Padmanabha Acharya and several other dignitaries will attend the programme, besides Bharti, according to the organisers.
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