New Delhi: The first-ever meeting of the National Ganga Council held in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, on 14th December 2019. The meeting was chaired by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several other chief ministers of the state. The National Ganga Council came into being in 2016 with a purpose to find solutions for cleaning of the accumulated trash in the Indian sacred river. The council had decided that it would meet at least once a year in the presence of the Prime Minister during the session.
An official stated to the media persons that, “Somehow this couldn’t be done so far, but one of the points taken up (in this session) was about having this meeting more regularly.”
The ministers who attended this meeting were – Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath (Uttar Pradesh); Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat; Union Ministers Prakash Javadekar, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Harsh Vardhan, R.K. Singh, Prahlad Patel, Mansukh Mandavia and Hardeep Singh Puri. And several other officials from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal (all Ganga basin states) were also present in this meeting.
The full majority of the Council, with the Prime Minister’s participation, was mostly ceremonious. The actual work of organizing, administering and thinking on subsidizing Namami Ganga ventures, is completed by an official council of the National Mission for Clean Ganga that meets each month. The most recent meeting was conducted on December 3rd, 2019. While a record of the procedures of Saturday’s meeting isn’t prepared at this point, discourses were about the advancement accomplished in the cleaning of the stream, said an authority.
Mr Modi likewise took a vessel ride from Atal Ghat to Sisamau drain outfall point. The Sisamau drain was one of Asia’s biggest channels that purged almost 140 million litres of untreated sewage into the Ganga and was one of the major sources of contamination in the river. It has although stopped to empty the sewage into the Ganga; however, the river water is still unfit for washing or using it as a drinking water source. On his arrival, Mr Modi slipped and fell on the steps at Atal Ghat. He hasn’t had any injuries from the incident. One of the steps was lopsided, and that caused the PMs little accident, reported the authority.
(news source- The Hindu)
This article is contributed by Ecole Globale International School.
