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The government has spent close to ₹11,500 crore for implementing 158 out of a total of 346 planned projects for cleaning and rejuvenating the River Ganga under the Nanami Ganga Project (NGP), the Rajya Sabha was told on Monday.
The projects, undertaken with the help of the governments of the States through which the river and its tributaries flow, include those meant to reduce the load of domestic sewage, industrial effluent, solid waste dumped to Ganga, river front management, rural sanitation, afforestation, biodiversity conservation among others, said Minister of State for Jalshakti, Prahlad Singh Patel in a reply to a Rajya Sabha question.
Out of 346 planned projects, 104 projects are in Uttar Pradesh, 62 are in West Bengal, 59 in Uttarakhand, 53 in Bihar, Jharkhand (13), Delhi (12) and the rest in other States such as Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. Among the projects completed are 45 projects each in UP and Uttarakhand, 35 projects in West Bengal, 11 in Bihar and a few others in other States, costing a total of ₹11,498.76 crore, Patel said.
National mission
Most of these projects were funded through the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) which was set up for implementing the programme to clean the river. He said between 2014-15 and 2021-22 (till June 30), the government has disbursed ₹10,792 crore to NMCG, which in turn passed a sum of ₹10,248.46 crore to the States, the Minister said.
Patel said there has been a substantial improvement in the quality of water flowing through the river because of these efforts. “As per CPCB (Central Pollution Control Board) data for 2021 (January to May), the observed water quality of river Ganga indicates that Dissolved Oxygen which is an indicator of river health has been found to be within acceptable limits of notified primary bathing water quality criteria and satisfactory to support the ecosystem of river across all seasons and also for almost entire stretch of river Ganga,” he said.
In a reply to another question, Patel said under NGP, a total of 24 projects costing ₹4,355 crore have been sanctioned for abating pollution in the river Yamuna, a major tributary of the Ganga. Out of these projects for creating sewage treatment capacity of 1862 million litres per day and other associated sewage infrastructure, five projects — two each in Delhi and Haryana and one in UP — have already been completed till date.
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