PM Modi on chaired the second meeting of the National Ganga Council (NGC) meeting in Kolkata via video conferencing, after the demise of his mother.
Union Minister for Jal Shakti, and other Union Ministers who are members of the council besides the Chief Ministers of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal.
After conducting the final rituals for his mother Heeraben, who passed away early this morning, the prime minister virtually joined the meeting.
PM Modi virtually opened a number of Indian Railways projects as well.
The National Ganga Council has been entrusted with general management of the Ganga River and its tributaries’ revitalization and prevention of pollution.
The Namami Gange Program is an integrated conservation mission that the Central Government approved in June 2014 as a “Flagship Program” with a financial allocation of Rs 20,000 crore to achieve the twin goals of effective pollution reduction and conservation and revitalization of the national river Ganga.
Projects for the development of sewage infrastructure in the Ganga basin totaling over Rs 2,700 were approved at the 46th meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG).
According to a Ministry of Jal Shakti announcement, 12 of the approved projects are for the construction of sewage infrastructure in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal totaling more than Rs 2,700 crore.
The UN recently recognised the Namami Gange initiative as one of the Top 10 World Restoration Flagships programmes focused at recovering the natural world. On World Restoration Day in Montreal, Canada, at a celebration for the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), G. Asok Kumar, the Director General of the Namami Gange project, accepted the award