Scrap Ganga Action Plan, advocates Union Minister

Varanasi, Apr 25 (UNI) Union Minister for Water Resources Saifuddin Soz today advocated scrapping of the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) aimed at purging and conserving the sacred river.

Much money has been wasted on the plan, but desired results were far from being achieved, Mr Soz, said adding that there was a strong case for scrapping GAP and instead constituting Ganga Conservation Authority to conserve and clean the river.

''Wasting money on GAP will not deliver the desired results.

Instead two separate conservation authorities should be constituted and entrusted the entire task of conserving and cleaning both the Ganges and Yamuna,'' Mr Soz suggested.

The Union Minister, while maintaining that this task was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Environment, he said, ''Besides constituting the twin authorities, a mass public awareness drive to check pollution in the two rivers must be started, especially in towns and cities located on their banks.'' ''Public funds should be allocated for spreading public awarness not only through various mass media, but the union and state legislators as well as panchayats should be actively blooded into the exercise to purge the holy river.'' The Supreme Court had yesterday threatened to prosecute the officers concerned, if the central government failed to produce the Utilisation (Fund) Certificate related to GAP Phase I.

A Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice R V Raveendran was extremely annoyed when the government failed to produce Fund Utilisation Certificate despite its order dated February 20, 2007.

An amount of Rs 1,000 crore was spent in the first phase and the petitioner is suspecting large scale bungling in it. Even the Monitoring Committee, headed by Union Environment Secretary, has not been able to do much in the matter.

Fixing May 17 as the next date of hearing, the court made it clear to the government that it will have to face dire consequences if it failed to mend its ways.

The first phase was from 1993-2000. However, the quality of the Ganga water deteriorated over the years and the used public funds seem to have gone down the drain.

UNI