Patna, (Bihar Times): Ganga runs its course of over 2500 kms from Gangotri in the Himalayas to Ganga Sagar in the Bay of Bengal through 29 cities. It is a river with which the people of India are attached spiritually and emotionally. Department of Environment, in December 1984, prepared an action plan for immediate reduction of pollution load on the river Ganga. The Cabinet approved the GAP (Ganga Action Plan)in April 1985 as a 100 per cent centrally sponsored scheme.

A division bench of the Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Union government and five states of Ganga basin, including Bihar, to explain how they had used more than Rs.10 billion meant for cleaning the river whose water quality, instead of improving, had only deteriorated further.

Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice R V Raveendran asked for the account of the funds after senior counsel Krishan Mahajan, assisting the court in monitoring the implementation of the Ganga Action Plan aimed at cleaning the river and going on since 1985, told the court that the quality of the river water had only worsened. He charged that over Rs 10 billion given by the central govenrment to Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal for checking the pollution seemed to have gone in waste. Uttarakhand was then in Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand was a part of Bihar.

The bench asked the central and the state governments to file the utilisation certificate of the money. The apex court has taken up the monitoring of the implementation of the Ganga Action Plan on a public
interest litigation. Mahajan also told the court that hundreds of sewage treatment plants installed along the river’s course had stopped functioning due to the lack of electricity supply.

On the other hand the counsel for the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) suggested setting up oxidation plants along the river for cleansing its water, saying they do not run on electricity and they do not require costly imported machineries for their operations. The bench asked the government to examine the feasibility of setting up such plants.

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