Lucknow: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday chaired the first meeting of the National Ganga Council in Kanpur and reviewed the works completed under the ambitious Namami Gange project.
The meeting was attended by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, Uttarakhand CM Trivendra Singh Rawat and Union ministers Prakash Javadekar, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Dr Harshvardhan, RK Singh, Prahlad Patel, Mansukh Mandavia and Hardeep Singh Puri attended the meeting along with several officers from the Centre and the states.
The PM also visited a Namami Gange Mission exhibition, showcasing the works done for the cleanliness of the river. PM’s visit has put the limelight back on pollution of Ganga and its cleaning which one the major poll promises of Modi while he contested Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi in 2014.
Namami Gange project to clean and rejuvenate the river was launched from Assi Ghat of Varanasi in November 2015 with the promised allocation of Rs 25,000 crore. The government had claimed that by 2019, 80 percent of the pollution would be removed from the river.