SC pulls up Centre on Ganga clean-up

The Supreme Court on Wednesday put a question mark on the Narendra Modi government’s “ultimate dream project” of cleaning the river Ganga, saying it would take another 200 years to finish the work if it was not taken up in stages.

A bench of Justices T S Thakur and R Banumathi expressed dissatisfaction over the Centre’s “bureaucratic” approach to the work and asked Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar to file additional response within three weeks, indicating achievable targets for the government.

“After seeing your action plan, it seems the Ganga will not be cleaned even after 200 years. You should take steps so that the Ganga flows in pristine glory and future generations can see it. It is your ultimate dream project. Please try so that the next generation is able to see the river in its original form. We don’t know whether we will see it or not,” the bench observed.

When Kumar presented a broad framework of the government proposals, the bench remarked that presenting a vision plan and artistic view would not help.

The court asked him to give a power point presentation with stage-wise targets to help it monitor the work.

“You should tell us how much time will you take, for example, to clean the river from ecologically sensitive Gangotri to Rishikesh as the area is sparsely populated. No follow up step has been undertaken since the notification of 2003,” the court told Kumar.

While noting that the river was most polluted in Allahabad, the court said it was ready to take legal action against industrial units, including tanneries in Kanpur, if they did not comply with set standards.

Kumar, who agreed to present stage-wise targets, also submitted that he had a talk with Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Uma Bharti.

The government would broadly focus on maintaining continuous and clean flows in the river and treating it as an ecological and zoological entity.