Do not fear pulling up officers when it comes to work: Gadkari

Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari Thursday said he does not fear pulling up officials when it comes on work even as he heaped praise on officers working on the Namami Gange project.

"I do not fear pulling up (officials) when it comes to work. And I don't listen to anyone. But I review the work on Ganga...our secretary U P Singh, our (National Mission for Clean Ganga) Director (General Rajiv Ranjan) Mishra and their team have worked very hard for the last six months," he said at an event here.

His remarks come days after he emphasised the virtues of accountability of leaders at a lecture here.

Gadkari said the mandate of cleaning the Ganga's tributaries was taken up with the launch of the Namami Gange programme. He said that with these projects, the release of sewage water into the Yamuna river, the most important tributary of the Ganga, would be stopped.

On the Lakhwar multi-purpose project between six states, the minister said that once the project was complete the uninterrupted flow of the Yamuna in Delhi would improve.

He said a trash skimmer had already been deployed for the Yamuna in Delhi for river surface cleaning.

Reiterating that the Ganga river would be 70 to 80 per cent clean by March next year, Gadkari said it would be almost be completely free of pollution by March 2020.