Besides Ganga, 254 polluted river stretches too require attention

NEW DELHI: Looking beyond India's national river Ganga and its tributaries, including Yamuna, the Centre had last week taken up the case of the polluted Mula Mutha river in Pune by finalizing a number of river cleaning measures. But other rivers in the country have so far not attracted similar attention.

Ganga river basin states, having 48 polluted river stretches, need special attention due to their lengths and the size of dependent population but this does not take away the case of other river basin states which have as many as 254 polluted river stretches.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) had last year identified these polluted river stretches and found the number of such stretches had increased from 150 in 2009 to 302 in 2015.

The polluted stretches were identified through constant monitoring of water quality in rivers across the country.

It was based on the BOD (bio-chemical oxygen demand) levels in water that shows the extent of organic and bacterial contamination.

Though Mulla Mutha in Pune (home town of environment minister Prakash Javadekar) was lucky to catch the Centre's attention when it signed a loan agreement with Japan International Cooperation Agency for pollution abatement in the river by January 2022, the other stretches remain neglected when the entire focus is on Ganga which, too, has so far not seen any result on the ground.

As many as 532 towns/cities fall along the polluted stretches of different rivers across the country as against 118 in the Ganga river basin states of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. The CPCB had found that the rivers were polluted mainly due to discharge of untreated municipal waste water. "The municipal corporations are not able to treat increasing load of sewage flowing into the water bodies. Secondly, the receiving water bodies also do not have water for dilution (of pollutants)," the pollution watchdog said in its report.

The data on sewage generation and wide gap in states' treatment capacities are also clearly reflected in the CPCB's conclusion.

It is learnt that the water resources ministry will brainstorm on these issues when it meets stakeholders, including states, environmentalists and senior officers of different ministries over the larger issue of water conservation early next month. The meeting will be held following a proposal that the jurisdiction over National River Conservation Plan (NRCP), which takes care of 30 major rivers across the country other than Ganga and its tributaries, should be transferred from the environment ministry to the water resources ministry to ensure an integrated approach.

At present, the water resources ministry takes care of Ganga and its tributaries whereas the management of 30 other big rivers comes under the environment ministry through its NRCP.

Though the environment ministry under the NRCP had in the past taken up the Sabarmati river conservation plan and pollution abatement of river Mindhola in Gujarat along with other minor projects in different states, the action on the ground could not reach the scale and urgency shown by the water resources ministry for the Ganga and its tributaries under the present government.