Rs 7,000 crore to clean Ganga

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Thursday approved a World Bank-assisted project for cleaning Ganga at an estimated cost of Rs 7,000 crore (over $1.5 billion).

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Thursday approved a World Bank-assisted project for cleaning Ganga at an estimated cost of Rs 7,000 crore (over $1.5 billion).

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The project will be implemented by the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), which was constituted in February 2009 as an empowered planning, financing, monitoring and coordinating authority for the Ganga river under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.

The central government will provide Rs.5,100 crore while the share of the state governments of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal will be Rs.1,900 crore.

The World Bank has agreed in-principle to provide a loan assistance of Rs.4,600 crore ($1 billion) to India for the NGRBA project, which will form part of the central share of the project. The duration of the project will be eight years.

The objective of the authority, which is chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is to ensure conservation of river Ganga and to maintain environmental flows by comprehensive planning and management, adopting a river basin approach.

The project will support NGRBA's objective of mission Clean Ganga. The project has been designed keeping in view the lessons learnt from the previous Ganga Action Plan and international river clean-ups.

The project will have three components relating to institutional development for setting up dedicated institutions for implementing the NGRBA programme, infrastructure investments including for municipal sewage, industrial pollution, solid wastes and river front management, and project implementation support.