LUCKNOW: On a mission to clean Ganga, Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over the first meeting of National Rejuvenation, Protection, and Management of River Ganga Council (National Ganga Council) during his visit to Kanpur on Saturday.
The meeting continued beyond the scheduled time and the PM reviewed the progress of the work done and deliberated upon various aspects of cleaning the holy river.
He also discussed the joint report on the projects carried out under the Namami Gange mission.
The PM took stock of the level of cleanliness of the river by sailing on its waves on a steamer.
“There were deliberations on the extent of improvement in water quality in Ganga in the 2017-km-long Gaumukh to Ganga Sagar stretch,” said an official privy to the meeting.
With Uttar Pradesh in focus vis-a-vis Namami Gange Project, the Centre has already released Rs 15,000 crore to five states for afforestation and vegetation along Ganga’s catchment areas to ensure adequate availability of water and uninterrupted flow of the river.
In fact, over 46 per cent of the nation’s population lives along the banks of River Ganga across the country. The action plans for rejuvenation and cleaning of the river would be executed in phases.
It would address issues like cleaning of the Ganga tributaries, phase-wise shifting of industries from Ganga vicinity, tapping of all big and small drains and setting up treatment plants in the smaller cities. The issues related to maintaining the uninterrupted flow of Ganga and commercial use of the river also came up for discussion in the meeting.
The target of ensuring zero discharge into Ganga has also been included in the new action plan.
Chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath, Uttarakhand CM Trivendra Singh Rawat and Bihar deputy CM Sushil Modi along with Union Ministers Prakash Javdekar, Hardeep Singh Puri and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, seven other central ministers and 21 officials of Central Pollution Control Board and Namami Gange mission were present at the meeting.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Jharkhand CM Raghubar Das did not turn up for the meeting.
A dozen Union ministers and nine secretaries of Central departments accompanied the PM during his trip.