Rs 7,000 cr will be spent on payment of dues: Bharti

A day after Cabinet approved Rs 20,000 crore for the flagship 'Namami Gange' programme, Union Water Resource Minister Uma Bharti today said around Rs 7000 crore will be spent on payment of dues of previous clean Ganga projects, which have escalated due to time and cost overruns.
"Only Rs 4000 crore was spent in past 29 years for cleaning of Ganga. Now, we will have to pay the liabilities (of previous projects) due to cost escalation which will be around Rs 7000 to Rs 8000 crore," Bharti told reporters after the 4th meeting of Inter-linking of rivers.
She said options would be explored for making the old policies more effective to yield better results, and NGOs and other organisations would be engaged for Ganga rejuvenation.

Expressing confidence that the government will be able to complete first phase of cleaning of the holy river by October next year, Bharti noted that the Ganga rejuvenation programme is a central sponsored scheme which does not required any financial assistance from states.
"The main reason why Central schemes get delayed is that they get stuck in obtaining approvals from state governments. Cleaning of Ganga is a 100 per cent centrally sponsored project and we do not have to seek any (financial) clearances from the states," she said.
Bharti said that the ministry has decided to engage four battalions of Territorial Army and deploy alongside the banks of Ganga for constant monitoring of littering and disposal of waste into the river under the project.

"With four battalions of Territorial Army, we will have around 3,000 personnel who will be working on the banks of Ganga to ensure that no pollution is created. They will also monitor the implementation of our schemes," said the Minister.