Ministries to carve out detailed report on Ganga in a month

Tourism, transportation and environment ministries to pool ideas

The inter-ministerial group on the river Ganga will come up with a blueprint for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream project to create an aviral and nirmal (clean and continuous) Ganga within 30 days.

 

Four ministries - water resources, transport, environment and tourism - came together on Friday at the Transport Bhawan for a brainstorming session, which lasted for around three hours, to discuss the road map for the river Ganga.

 

An inter-ministerial committee of secretaries under the chairmanship of Alok Rawat, Secretary of the Ministry of Water Resources will be constituted to prepare a plan for the river Ganga within a month. Every ministry will have to pool in ideas related to their division, including tourism, transportation and conservation of environment, for the holy river after which a Cabinet note will be prepared.

 

"A Cabinet note on the subject will be prepared therafter," Union Minister for Road, Transport and Shipping Ministry Nitin Gadkari told a press conference after the meeting.

 

The panel also proposed to construct 11 terminals on the banks of the Varanasi-Hoogly stretch on the river Ganga for freight movement along with barrages at every 100 kilometers. "It is proposed to conduct dredging to provide a width of 45 meters and for a three meters draft (depth) to enable transport of passengers and goods between Varanasi and Hoogly on the river Ganga in the first stage of its development," Gadkari added.

 

The panel also announced that a Research Institute on the Ganga will be set up under the Human Resource Development ministry at Roorkee. The Environment Ministry has been tasked to make the river "pristine" by taking various measures at polluted destinations such as Kanpur.

 

The senior bureaucrats of the four ministries would be meeting next week to discuss the plan of action, sources said.

 

According to sources, several innovative ideas also came up during the interaction. For instance, Gadkari suggested that dirty waters could be given to tanneries and they could utilise it to clean the river which would reduce the cost as well.

 

During his election campaign, Modi had constantly stressed that he is contesting from the Varanasi seat because he has been called to "serve Ma Ganga." Modi won by an impressive margin from the holy city and, after coming to power, had imediately constituted an inter-ministerial group to fulfill the promise. Even a separate ministry for the river Ganga has been carved out.

 

The inter-ministerial group was headed by Gadkari, and the meeting was attended by Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, Tourism Minister Shripad Naik, Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Minister Uma Bharti along with senior ministry officials.