Gadkari says that while the closure of 358 grossly-polluting industries led to a gradual drop in pollution levels in Ganga, there is some distance to cover
With less than an year to go for the 2019 general elections, Minister for Water Resources, Nitin Gadkari, claimed that by March 2019, river Ganga's water quality will see an improvement by 70 to 80 per cent. Cleaning Ganga, India's holiest river that provides livelihood to millions, has been Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal ambition and the Ganga mission was a chief poll promise of Modi during the successful campaign of the 2014 general elections.
Gadkari said that sewage treatment plants with a capacity of 1,600 million liters per day (MLD) was available as of today and the Centre was going all out to finish 94 projects by 2019 to create an additional sewage treatment capacity of 1,928 MLD on Ganga's main stem. Besides these 94 projects, eight more such projects are in the pipeline on Yamuna, Kosi, and Ramganga — Ganga's tributaries.
Gadkari said that while the closure of 358 grossly-polluting industries led to a gradual drop in pollution levels in Ganga, there is some distance to cover. "I can definitely say that we will try and ensure that Ganga becomes nirmal (clean) by at least 70 to 80 per cent by March 2019."
The union minister was briefing reporters in Delhi and also reaching out to reporters in Kanpur, Varanasi and Patna, some of the most polluted cities on Ganga's main stem, through video conferencing.
With more than hundred projects lined up, the minister said that Centre would be increasing its utilisation of the Rs 20,000 crore corpus under Namami Gange by 60 to 70 per cent. This will translate to an expenditure of close to Rs 10,000 crore in the current fiscal. The Modi-led NDA government has been criticised for tardy progress on the Namami Gange and last year, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India audit showed that the flagship project was marred by poor financial management and implementation woes.
As per official data, ten cities — Haridwar, Kanpur, Patna, Farrukhabad, Bhagalpur, Howrah-Bally, Kolkata, Allahabad, Varanasi, and Mathura — contributed to 64 per cent of total sewage generation of 1,897 million liters per day. After Gadkari took charge in August, he had sought to finish tendering of projects in these cities by March this year under the Hybrid Annuity Model. But, this has happened only in the case of Haridwar and Varanasi and the rest are likely to be completed by July.
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