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Your plan will take 200 yrs to clean Ganga: SC to Centre
R Sedhuraman
Legal Correspondent

Submit phase-wise action plan, govt told After going through the Centre’s affidavit, the court said it was unable to comprehend the scheme properly as it had been drafted in the typical bureaucratic style The Centre must prepare a time-bound, phase-wise action plan for cleaning the Ganga so that the results could be measured at the end of its five-year term in May 2019 The government should submit such a plan in three weeks

New Delhi, September 3
The Supreme Court today asked the Narendra Modi government to prepare a time-bound, phase-wise action plan for cleaning the Ganga so that the results could be measured at the end of its five-year term in May 2019.

A Bench comprising Justices TS Thakur and R Banumathi directed the government to submit such a plan within three weeks in the form of power-point presentation to enable the court to easily understand the scheme with visual effects.

It also asked the government to submit a separate plan for the first 135 km stretch of the river starting from Gangotri as the area along this course was ecologically sensitive.

Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, however, persuaded the Bench not to record the computer presentation point in the order, assuring the court that the government would do this of its own accord. After going through the Centre’s affidavit, the Bench said it was unable to comprehend the scheme properly as it had been drafted in the typical bureaucratic style. The vision plan gave the impression that it might go on for the next 200 years. Instead of stating what would be the result of the Ganga Conservation Mission or “Namami Gange” at the conclusion of the scheme, it should be split into several phases so that the targets could be monitored periodically, it suggested.

The court, however, clarified that the government was at liberty to implement the mission all along the river simultaneously or choose small stretches under different phases. The effort should be to restore the pristine glory of the Ganga and make it usable for various purposes, including navigation, tourism and water supply, the Bench said.

The Centre told the court about its plan to set up an integrated “Namami Gange” mission for conservation and improvement of the river. In the 2014-15 Budget, allocation had been made for ‘ghat’ cleanliness and beautification of the river front at Kedarnath, Haridwar, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna and Delhi. The government said it was also “actively considering” restructuring of the National Ganga River Basin Authority to make it more effective. It did not give any detail on this score.