Modi’s Pet Namami Gange Project Set To Miss Deadline
Construction of mandatory STPs very slow; lack of coordination among agencies to blame.
Even after four years of its launch, the Namami Gange project in Uttarakhand is moving at a tardy pace and is likely to miss its deadline. The Central government had fixed March 2019 as the deadline for its completion.
According to a report in The Tribune, the construction of mandatory STPs is very slow and in many places work to stop the discharge of waste from nullahs directly into the river is far from nearing completion.
A total of 54 nullahs were spotted for diverting their flow away from the river.
According to officials, a total of 19 STPs were sanctioned to prevent the discharge of the nullahs into the river. “There is a lack of coordination among various agencies. At several places the work is shoddy,” an official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
A total of 15 cities were selected between Gomukh and Haridwar where 59 nullahs were directly releasing waste into the river. However, work on 18 STPs is pending.
An amount of Rs 88,520 lakh has been sanctioned under the project, out of which only Rs 8,830 lakh has been sanctioned and only Rs 7,180 lakh spent.
The government officials say the project might miss the March 2019 deadline as more towns have now been included. “Several new components have been added in the last few months. So these may take time and go beyond 2019,” said Raghav Langar, additional secretary and project in charge.
He said recently Dehradun and Srinagar were included in the project. More new projects have been sanctioned by the Central government. The construction of ghats and crematorium are also being completed at a slow paced.
The project has witnessed several glitches since its start. According to a performance audit report on the Ganga Rejuvenation plan that was tabled in Parliament in December last year, the work of building bathing ghats and crematoria on two stretches of the Ganga (Rudraprayag-Devprayag and Devprayag- Rishikesh) under the Namami Gange projects missed the November 2017 deadline.
Under the Namami Gange project, 28 ghats (15 bathing and 13 cremation ghats) were to be developed and the work was to be completed by November 2017 but these projects failed to meet the deadline, TOI quoted a CAG report as saying.