Draft legislation aimed at conserving River Ganga is expected to be ready in a month or two, and as part of the cleaning efforts the Centre also plans to set up additional sewage treatment plants on a public private partnership basis, a senior official today said.
"Ganga being the national river, a need was felt to have legislation for conserving it. Some people had drafted the same. After going through the draft, we felt a need to improve it.
"The same is being looked into by a retired senior official now. We should receive the improved draft in a month or two," Secretary, Union Water Resources Ministry, Shashi Shekhar here said.
He said that after the draft is improved, it will be presented to the National Ganga River Basin Authority under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"If it is accepted by the authority, we will prepare a cabinet note and present the legislation to Parliament," he added.
The legislation, when enacted, is expected to give teeth to the 'Namami Gange' mission as it proposes to make polluting the river an offence.
On other measures the government has chalked out to rejuvenate Ganga, Shekhar said the ministry is making efforts to increase the existing water level and abate its pollution, which he noted, is on "higher side" at present.
"As far as pollution abatement is concerned, there are three types of pollution. One is people dump waste of all kinds into the river, waste flows through nullahs to the river. Second, municipal sewage contributes to 70-75 per cent of the pollution. Rest comes from industries," he said.
Shekhar reiterated the government has planned to undertake entry-level activities such as surface cleaning of Ganga; repair/modernise crematoria and ghats along the river and set up plants to treat waste water from villages. All these activities, he said, will be undertaken between the on-going month and March.
He added that in urban areas the Centre plans to set up additional sewage treatment plants (STPs) with capacity of treating 400 million litres.
The work will be carried out through a public private partnership (PPP) model, Shekhar said, as the municipalities lack capacity to operate the plants.
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As per the plan, contractors concerned will be paid annuity over a period of 15 years for which they will operate the STPs.
"By April-May, we plan to issue tenders for 30 municipalities. By early next year, we plan to cover all the municipalities. This is also our plan of action," Shekhar added.
The official said the government is making sure industries also take steps to reduce pollution of the river. He added the Centre will set up common effluent treatment plant to recycle water and sell the same to industries for their operations.
"We have spoken to industries, which have agreed to buy it. We will issue tenders by April," he added.
Also, Shekhar said, 113 online monitoring stations will be set up along the river.
"Out of these, tenders for 36 have already been issued. The rest will be issued later this year. The stations will help us see if level of pollution in Ganga is decreasing or not," he added.
Shekhar also said the government will deploy five trash- cleaning machines at as many locations by next month.
"One is already operational in Benaras and two others we will procure in next 10 days. Remaining two are in manufacturing state, which we will get in February," he said.
