Surface cleaning of Ganga will start in January in 10 major cities of the country. This was stated by Minister of Water Resources & Ganga Rejuvenation Uma Bharati to the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Wednesday.
The cities include Haridwar, Garhmukteshwar, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Sahibganj, Kolkata, Nabadwip and Gangasagar. The cleaning process will include removal of solid
waste, garbage, and dead bodies, etc, under Namami Gange programme.
Bharati said that trial for this has already begun in Varanasi and it has been assigned to Tata projects ltd under corporate social responsibility scheme. Organisations like NTPC, ONGC, and Petronet have expressed their willingness to fund the surface cleaning project.
The Minister pointed out that there is an urgent need for renovation or modernisation and construction of crematoriums along Ganga and Yamuna Rivers. The scheme will be simultaneously taken up from January in 25 urban
local bodies in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. In the process, over 100 crematoriums will be renovated, modernised or constructed by November 2016.
Sewage treatment project under the flagship Namami Gange programme has so far completed 29 projects at a cost of Rs 463.58 crore. It has developed a treatment capacity of 123 Million litres/ Day (MlD) covering sewer network of 666.69 km.
She said that a total of 93 projects have been sanctioned at the cost of Rs 1,502.66 crore. This will result in the creation of treatment capacity of 858 MlD and sewer network of 3,623.10 km.
In a bid to control pollution or discharge of effluents in the river, Minister informed the Parliamentary Committee that Real Time Effluent Monitoring Stations have been installed in 508 out of 764 grossly polluting industries.
This includes distillery, paper industry, tanneries, textiles and sugar mills. Action plan has been prepared for reduction in effluent quality with the completion target of March 2017.
The Minister informed the members that 113 new Real-time monitoring stations with display boards at selected location will be set up next year to monitor water quality of the Ganga on hourly basis. These will be in addition to the 57 existing manual monitoring stations. Tenders have already been floated for 36 such stations.
The progress of River Front and Ghat Development projects is also on in full swing with the development of four out of 20 ghats completed in Patna last month. The net riverfront development budget at Patna stands at Rs 243.27 crore which is scheduled to be completed by 2017-18.
Bharati further said that work at Chandighat (Haridwar), Chhath Ghat (Delhi) and Sahibganj will begin next month. The Minister said Detailed Project Reports are under preparation for the Ghats at Kedarnath, Allahabad, Kanpur, Kolkata and Rishikesh.