Ganga pollution: Centre to hold meet with village heads

With an aim of bringing down the level of pollution in Ganga, the Centre will hold a meeting with heads of all 1,657 villages situated along the river here next week.
During the day-long conference 'Ganga Swachhata - Gramin Sahabhagita', scheduled to be held on January 30, Union Water Resources Ministry will share different water management models with the village heads under its Ganga Gram programme.
Union Ministers Uma Bharti, Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Irani, Birender Singh and Mahesh Sharma are expected to attend the meeting, besides the panchayat representatives and officials.
Apart from these leaders, Chief Ministers of five states from where Ganga flows, namely Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, have also been invited to attend the conference.

The Ganga Gram initiative, launched earlier this month by Union Water Resources Minister Bharti, intends at bringing down the river's pollution level by treating sewage water from the hamlets flowing into Ganga.
"We will share with the panchayat heads water management and disposal issues relating to the river during the conference. We will showcase to them four-five models including the Seechewal model to the attendees.

"The village heads can pick from these models the kind of water management system they want to follow in their respective villages based on local requirement," a source said.
According to the source, sewage water forms 80 per cent of the factors contributing to pollution of the river, while the rest of the contamination occurs due to industrial pollutants.

Under the Ganga Gram programme, the Government plans to divert open drains in the villages and treated by way of alternate arrangement. Toilets will be made available in each village. The government is expected to spend Rs 1 crore on each of the village for the purpose.
In the first phase of the programme, 200 villages will be covered.
Seechewal is a village located in Punjab where cooperation of locals has been solicited for water management and waste disposal to keep clean a rivulet, Holy Kali Bein.