New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Centre to file a status report on the ambitious ‘Clean Ganga’ project in which over Rs 2,000 crore had been spent so far.
Pointing out that the PIL filed in 1985 is pending for 35 years, a Bench of Chief Justices J.S. Khehar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud asked the Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar to file the report in one week on the steps taken to set up sewage treatment plants along the banks of the river.
The CJI told the SG “We do not intend to keep it pending. It is a very old and an important matter. Let us finish it off. Earlier petitioner and environmentalist M.C. Mehta said precious little had been done in the last 32 years and the PIL is pending since 1985.”
In the last hearing on January last year the Central government had said that Ganga will be cleaned by 2018. The top court wanted to know whether the government was serious about completing the clean-up exercise during its current tenure or will keep it pending for further.
The Supreme court had said the government should be “more worried” about the pollution in the river since this government had pledged its commitment to the issue.
“The net effect is that '2,000 crore has already been spent and the river is still not clean,” the Bench told the Centre.
The Central government said a consortium of seven IITs was involved in the Ganga project and it would give a report and a roadmap would emerge.
