Bihar CM Nitish Kumar to skip 'Namami Gange' event chaired by PM Modi

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will skip the National Ganga Council meeting to be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kolkata on December 30.

In place of Kumar, his Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav will attend the event.

The Chief Ministers of all northern and eastern Indian states have been invited to the 'Namami Gange' meeting.

"Last time when it happened in Uttar Pradesh, Sushil Modi attended it as he was seeing the concerned department. This time Tejashwi Yadav is handling this department, so we requested him to go," said Kumar.

The Bihar CM also "dodged" the 25th Eastern Zonal Council meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah a few days back in Kolkata.

At the 46th meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), projects worth about Rs 2,700 for the development of sewerage infrastructure in the Ganga basin were approved.

Out of the approved projects, 12 pertain to the development of sewerage infrastructure in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal worth more than Rs 2,700 crore, a Ministry of Jal Shakti release said.

Afforestation programmes for 2022-23 for Uttarakhand and Bihar were also approved at an estimated cost of Rs 42.80 crore that aims to create an enabling environment for climate resilient and sustainable ecosystem management with a community participatory approach, the release said.

In West Bengal, a big project for the Rejuvenation of River Adi Ganga, a tributary of Ganga, in Kolkata was approved at an estimated cost of Rs. 653.67 crore that includes the construction of 3 Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) of 10 Million Litres per Day (MLD), 11.60 MLD and 3.5 MLD capacities, it added.

A major project in Jharkhand was approved in the meeting. The project includes the construction of 5 STPs of a total 192 MLD capacity (18+21+75+60+18), interception and diversion and other works at an estimated cost of Rs. 808.33 crore in Dhanbad town.

This project is for pollution abatement in Damodar river, an important tributary of the Ganga and aims to tap all the drains falling into Damodar from the town, which indirectly pollutes Ganga.

Recently, the Namami Gange initiative has been recognised by the United Nations (UN) as one of the Top 10 World Restoration Flagships programmes aimed at reviving the natural world.

The award was received by G. Asok Kumar, the Director General of the Namami Gange project during a function at the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) in Montreal, Canada on World Restoration Day.