Dues incurred during previous clean Ganga projects, which have escalated due to time and cost overruns, will alone eat up Rs7,000 crore of the Rs20,000 crore that the Government has planned to spend on its ambitious Namami Gange project. “Only Rs4,000 crore was spent in the past 29 years for cleaning the Ganga. Now, we will have to pay the liabilities (of previous projects) due to cost escalation which will be around Rs7,000 to Rs8,000 crore,” Union Water Resource Minister Uma Bharti told reporters after the 4th meeting of Inter-linking of rivers on Thursday.
As per the Ministry’s target, the first phase of cleaning of the river will be completed by October next year. The main reason for the delay of Central schemes is because they are held up in getting approvals from the State Governments at various stages. Since Namai Gange is a 100 per cent Centrally-sponsored project, “we do not have to seek any financial clearances from the States,” said the Minister.
For round the clock monitoring on disposal of waste into the river and prevent the littering of the areas around, more than 3,000 security personnel will be deployed on the banks of the river, across the five States along which the river flows. This way, the Ministry would raise four battalions of territorial army who will also monitor the implementation of the various schemes.
Steps would also be taken to make the existing old policies workable and more effective for better results. Various NGO’s would also be involved in this regard. The Ministry decided that since Ganga was mostly polluted by the industries that discharge its effluents directly into the river, they would be made to ensure that only treated water is eventually drained into the river.
The Ministry had issued notices to 764 industries, and asked them to check release of effluents into River Ganga and submit a detailed action taken report on controlling and preventing pollution within 15 days, way back in March. Of the total 764 industries sent notice, 687 are located in Uttar Pradesh alone. The list of industries also includes some reputed industries such as Britannia, NTPC, ITC, Hindustan Motors, Indian Oil Corporation and Bata. The issues largely concerned , unfunctional effluent treatment plants and common effluent treatment plants in the industrial clusters that are a key reason for abatement of effluent discharge.