Many authoritiess, no monitoring failed Ganga cleaning: IITS

NEW DELHI: Multiplicity of authorities, lack of assistance from state governments and dearth of monitoring has led to the failure of cleaning Ganga, a consortium of seven IITS told the National Green Tribunal on Thursday. The consortium's submission came in response to a query raised by a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar which had asked the expert body about the reasons for failure of Ganga Action Plan-i and II.

The consortium of IITS in Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee, was entrusted with the task of finalising a holistic Ganga River Basin Man-

agement (GRBM) programme.

"Namami Gange programme should be run by knowledge and not perception. There are a number of authorities at state and national levels, causing multiplicity. There is lack of administrative

intent and coordination among various wings of government," Professor Vinod Tare of IIT Kanpur, the coordinator of consortium, told a bench which also had Justice U D Salvi.

When NGT asked whether the consortium had "collected or prepared" any data on pollution in Ganga independently, Tare said most information was taken from various state bodies and 80-90 per cent data was "distilled" by the experts' body.

To this, the bench asked "did you verify any data which was taken from different sources, whether it is correct or not? Because our experience has been that the data changes with the authority. Did you verify the data even on a single stretch of Ganga?"

When the professor replied in negative, the green panel observed "Government data is often ill-founded and there is hardly any nexus with the reality on the ground, so you should always cross-check."