With a little over nine months left before the Narendra Modi government’s ambitious Ganga cleaning programme ‘Namami Gange’ ends, the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) has so far managed to spend just 29 per cent of the sanctioned Rs 28,790 crore budget to complete 37 per cent of the projects.
The Modi government had launched the programme in 2015 with a total budgetary outlay of Rs 20,000 crore for the period between 2014-15 and 31 December 2020. However, the cost of setting up sewage infrastructure, ghat, crematoria and riverfront development, and river surface cleaning, among other sanctioned projects, was subsequently raised to Rs 28,790 crore.
Sewage treatment plants (STPs) have been at the centre of Ganga pollution abatement. As per Namami Gange targets, STPs with over 2,000 million litres a day (MLD) capacity had to be rehabilitated of which only 328 MLD have been done. A look at the status of all the projects undertaken makes one doubt whether the government would even achieve its revised deadline.
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