Namami Ganga mission gets a boost

In order to speed up the projects related to Ganga cleaning, the ministry of water resources will allow people and independent organizations to take up cleaning stretches of Ganga by applying to the National Mission for Clean Ganga directly. To avoid bureaucratic delays, the tendering process has been simplified and a committee of officials has been appointed to approve the projects and monitor their implementation. By way of this, the National Mission for Clean Ganga has approved eight projects worth Rs 700 crore, out of which four pertain to sewage management in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, three are related to the treatment of drains through bio-remediation and one of inventorisation and surveillance of river Ganga. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi had recently laid the foundation stone for setting up four STPs of 140 MLD of capacity in Patna on October 14 which would cost Rs 738.14 crore. Union minister Nitin Gadkari said that by December, all the tender related work of these projects would be completed and work orders would be issued by March next year. He asserted that there will be a lot of improvement in water quality of the Ganga by March 2019. He had also said that the government will ensure transparent and corruption-free implementation of the project.