The Centre has set up a committee of secretaries to short out inter-ministerial issues related to Namami Gange, the flagship project of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The committee will include secretaries of Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Environment and Forest and Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation.
"Now, 2,789 out of 4,291 villages falling along the Ganga have been declared Open Defecation Free (ODF). We have also constructed 8.96 lakh Individual House Hold Latrine (IHHL) which is 54 percent of the target," said Uma Bharti, Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation.
The formation of the committee of secretaries was announced by Bharti after first meeting of the empowered Task Force on River Ganga. Bharti also informed that the online Effluent Monitoring Systems (EMS) have been installed in 572 out of 760 major polluting industries.
"We are collecting data online from 266 such industries for monitoring the pollution level of the effluents they discharge in the river," she added. She further informed that 36 polluting industrial units have been give a deadline of March 31 to install online EMS.
"We are developing a system to get real time pollution data from 113 locations of Ganga on the pattern of real time ambient air quality data for air pollution. This will help us to locate high polluting locations and take action accordingly," said Uma Bharti.