National Mission on Clean Ganga (NMCG) on 24 March 2015 asked five states namely States of Uttar Pradesh (UP), Uttrakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand and West-Bengal to furnish Ganga Action Plan within 15 days.
NMCG directed 118 Municipalities/ Urban Local Bodies and 687 industrial units in these States to furnish the action plans directly to the concerned State Program Management Group (SPMGs) in the respective State.
It asked five states to furnish their action plan to set up and modernise sewage treatment plants (STPs), otherwise it would be constrained to report the states' inaction to the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal that have been hearing pending petitions on river pollution.
The NMCG also instructed these states to mark it a copy for construction/rehabilitation and/or upgradation of the sewage treatment plants (STPs), installation of requisite equipments /augmentation of the STPs by such municipalities /urban local bodies and Effluent Treatment Plants /Common Effluent Treatment Plant (ETPs/CETPs) zero liquid discharge and real time monitoring for the discharge of trade effluents for abatement of pollution by the industries.
Background
According to the recent findings of a report which was prepared by a team of experts from different government agencies, have noted that these 118 towns/cities collectively generate over 3636 million litres per day (MLD) of sewage as against the treatment capacity of approximately 1027 MLD of the existing 55 sewage treatment plants (STPs) in these towns/cities spread in five states.
The report, highlighting the poor infrastructure of these towns, was prepared by a team of experts from six different organizations of the ministry including National Institute of Hydrology, Central Water Commission, National Water Development Agency and Central Ground Water Board.
The team had submitted its report to the Ministry of water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation in December 2014.
The report also noted that there are as many as 144 drains that discharge untreated water into the river.
The maximum number of such drains are located in West Bengal (54) followed by UP (51), Bihar (25) and Uttarakhand (14).
Setting up STPs and measures to recycle the entire drain water are parts of Union Government’s Namami Gange plan. The plan was launched in 2014 to clean River Ganga.
Under the Ganga River Basin Management Plan — 2015, prepared and submitted by the consortium of seven Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), the government has already devised a comprehensive action plan for short-term (3 years), medium-term (5 years) and long-term (10 years and more) to clean the river.
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