FM announces Rs 1.4 lakh crore for Swachch Bharat 2.0

The government has allocated Rs 1,41,678 crore to tackle water, land and air pollution, besides waste management over the next five years.

In her Budget speech on Monday, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman dubbed the initiative 'Urban Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0'.

"For further swachhta of urban India, we intend to focus on complete faecal sludge management and waste water treatment, source segregation of garbage, reduction in single-use plastic, reduction in air pollution by effectively managing waste from construction-and-demolition activities and bio-remediation of all legacy dump sites," the minister said.


Sitharaman said the government has allocated another Rs 2,217 crore for tackling air pollution specifically.

This money would be invested across 42 cities having a population of more than 1 million residents, she added.

Air pollution has become a contentious issue across most Indian metro cities, especially in Delhi-NCR, where the capital regularly sees pollution touching emergency levels during the winter season.

This follows an infusion of Rs 4,400 crore during last year's budget. That money was announced as part of the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), which aims to reduce the harmful PM 2.5 pollution levels by 20% to 30% by 2024, keeping the 2017 pollution levels as the baseline.