New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Jal Shakti on Wednesday signed an agreement with 12 technical education institutions for basin management of six rivers.
The agreement has been made between the ministry of Jal Shakti and academic institutions under the National River Conservation Plan. Through this project, the responsibility of research, monitoring and gathering technical knowledge required for the condition assessment and management plan in basin management of Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, Cauvery, Narmada and Periyar has been given to 12 institutions (different IIT, NIT and NEERI), the Ministry of Jal Shakti said.
The MoA was signed by G Ashok Kumar, Project Director on behalf of NRCD and the Directors of the consortium institutes and IIT Kanpur. The Directors of all institutions participating in the project and office-bearers of National Mission for Clean Ganga and Ministry of Jal Shakti were present at the auditorium of Dr. Ambedkar International Centre in Delhi, the ministry said.
Praising the work of cGanga (Centre for Ganga Basin Management and Studies), run under the leadership of IIT Kanpur, Union Minister of Jal Shakti Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said CGanga has tried to make new centres by connecting academic institutions in the basin management of 6 rivers.
"Just as cGanga has contributed to the strengthening of the technical side of basin management of the Ganga river, it is hoped that these academic institutions will strengthen the technical side of basin management of rivers in the east, west, centre and south," Shekhawat said.
In his address, the minister said that many efforts were made in the past to clean the river Ganga, but when it was given the form of a mission and academic knowledge was combined with administrative methods, then we got better results. Due to better planning and proper implementation, today UNESCO has included the Namami Gange Mission among the ten best conservation and revitalization campaigns in the world, the ministry said.
In a bid to make river conservation a mass movement with the aim of maintaining the purity and uninterrupted flow of Ganga, Prime Minister Narendra Modi linked it to livelihood and gave the principle of Arth Ganga and on his initiative the river conservation and revitalization scheme was made knowledge based. In this way, research and scientific documentation in the field of river science got a boost in the country and another pillar in the form of Gyan Ganga joined this campaign, the ministry added.
