NEW DELHI: The Centre is proposing to create special purpose vehicles (SPVs) in five states following a trust deficit in carrying out its Ganga cleanup mission that has widened after the Bihar polls in which the BJP received a drubbing.
The Union Ministry for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation has mooted the plan for better management of projects after its inability to push state governments to act swiftly on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Clean Ganga programme. The SPVs will not only maintain the network of sewage treatment plants (STPs) across the Ganga basin but also drive the creation of new ones. The ministry has moved a cabinet note for the purpose which is expected to be discussed soon.
“The level of progress desired hasn’t been reached despite a big push from the highest authorities. There are many factors responsible for it, including disagreements between Centre and state governments and funds crunch. So, we have now decided to create SPVs which will carry out Ganga cleaning and rejuvenation in a focused manner,” said a senior official of the ministry.
The Ganga basin, which is spread across one million square kilometres, supports 450 million people. Five major states falling in the basin are Uttarakhand, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal.
There are two major highlights of the proposal of the Ganga Mission.
“Firstly, we are trying a multi-stakeholder approach where all work will not be left on state governments. Instead, states will be made an important part of the proposed SPVs. The SPVs would drive the overall cleaning and maintenance work of STPs,” the official said.
“Secondly, we are bringing in private players for cleaning by proposing a public-private partnership model for building STPs. The private concessionaires, who will be selected for the cleaning work, won’t get all the money for the project in one go. Instead, our plan is to follow the deferred payment model where we pay them on the basis of their work at the end of the year,” the official added.