The Empowered Steering Committee (ESC) under the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) on Wednesday approved projects worth Rs2,446 crore for reducing pollution of the river through a major thrust on afforestation besides the development of ghats and crematoria. The afforestation project alone would have a budget of Rs2,294 crore for a duration of five years.
All the projects will be implemented under Centrally-sponsored scheme of ‘Namami Gange’ with the Centre bearing 100 per cent cost.
These activities would be carried out in the stretch from Haridwar to Uttarakhand Border in Uttarakhand, Garhmukteshwar in UP, Buxar, Hajipur and Sonepur of Bihar, Sahibganj, Rajmahal and Kanhaiya Ghat of Jharkhand and Delhi and afforestation along the banks of the Ganga.
The sources in the Ministry of Water Resources and Ganga Rejuvenation informed that ESC also appraised the Detailed Project Report on ‘Forestry Intervention in River Ganga’ in the five basin states namely; Uttrakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal along the banks of River Ganga. The aim of the project is to augment water flow together with controlling the flow of pollutants into the river through appropriate forestry intervention along the banks of the Ganga.
The major components of the project include implementation of Forestry Interventions. It also calls for strengthening knowledge management and national capacity for forestry interventions and conservation of Rivers, besides scaling up and replication of successful models of Forestry interventions and Riverscape.
Forest Research Institute (FRI), Dehradun had earlier submitted a DPR on the relevant forestry interventions for Ganga in two volumes. While the first volume deals with the main DPR , the second contains State Summaries/DPRs in the context of five participating states located along the course of the river.
The sources further informed that the appraisals of all the recommended projects was carried out by Third Party Appraisal committee constituted by Consortium of IITs and for Forestry Interventions of Ganga by the committee constituted under the Chairmanship of Director General, Ministry of Environment and Forests.