Ganga mission fights to stay afloat

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has indicted the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) — a nodal central agency to implement the government’s flagship ‘Namami Gange’ programme — for delay in executing the Ganga cleaning projects, non-utilisation of funds meant for river cleaning and lapses in monitoring.

In its report on performance of the ‘Namami Gange’ (Rejuvenation of River Ganga) programme, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, the CAG also highlighted its findings which show that the river water quality in eight out of 10 cities/towns (except Rishikesh and Haridwar) along Ganga does not meet even the outdoor bathing standards.

The cities/towns which come under this category include Kanpur, Allahabad,


Varanasi, Patna, Munger, Bhagalpur, Gayespur and Budge Budge. The CAG in its comparative study of river water quality found that the Total Coliform (TC) level in all these cities was very high, ranging from six to 334 times higher than the prescribed standards, during 2016-17.

Coliform is a broad class of bacteria found in the environment, including the faeces of man and other warmblooded animals. The presence of coliform bacteria in water may indicate a possible presence of disease-causing organisms.

Among these eight cities-\towns, the TC level was highest (334 times higher than prescribed levels) in Gayespur in West Bengal.

The CAG had initiated performance audit of the ‘Namami Gange’ in the wake of the Uttarakhand high court’s directions for a special audit of all the centrally financed schemes launched to rejuvenate the river Ganga.

The federal auditor mainly audited the activities which took place during 2014-15 to 2016-17 and selected 87 projects (worth over Rs 7,655 crore) for this purpose. Some earlier ongoing projects on Ganga cleaning too were scrutinised by the CAG which, on the request of the Union water resources ministry, also concurrently audited the NMCG.

Considering that the measures taken in the past were inadequate, the present NDA government had launched ‘Namami Gange’ and allocated an initial sum of Rs 2,037 crore for this in the Union budget of 2014-15.