On the issues related to the Ganga, the Uttarakhand government appeared to be now competing with the Centre.
After the Centre declared the Ganga as national heritage last year, the state government is also not lagging behind.
Recently, all the 12 members of the state council of ministers met in Haridwar and decided to set up a Ganga conservation board to clean the river.
The move is also being seen as the state government’s apparent attempt to tap huge funds in the name of Ganga. Early this year, the state government had got over Rs 500 crore for the management of the ‘Mahakumbh’.
After chairing the Haridwar meeting, which was first of its kind, Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhariyal Nishank said the Ganga, which had already been declared a national heritage, should now be given the status of a world heritage site. For this purpose, the government would make a formal request to the Centre.
The meeting also decided to set up a Ganga conservation board, which would be autonomous and would exclusively work for the cleaning of the river. The government has also chalked out a plan billed “Gangotri Nirmal Yojana” in order to clean the Ganga, from Gaumukh to Haridwar. Under the first phase, the sewage pipes falling directly into the river in areas like Swargashram, Muni-Ki-Reti and Haridwar would be tapped. “All these plans are meant to attract media attention and tap huge funds in the name of the Ganga,” claimed Uttarakhand Congress President Yashpal Arya.
The meeting also decided to set up a permanent mela authority to take care of arrangements of not only future ‘Kumbh melas’ but also other festivals like Ganga Dussehra and Kanwar mela when lakhs of pilgrims visit Haridwar.
Apart from this, the government also decided to provide facilities to the pilgrims coming in Chardham on the lines of Kumbh mela.
The meeting, which was preceded by a holy dip in the Ganga by all the ministers, also signaled the end of the three-month long ‘Mahakumbh mela’, which the government claimed had attracted over 5 crore people from 140 countries.
