Chennai: The Centre’s Ganga clean-up project is the ‘beginning’ of the Modi government’s mission to clean up all the major water bodies in India, including the southern rivers, Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar said here.“Our rivers and other water bodies are filthy because we have the habit of throwing garbage and other things into water bodies.
Cleaning up Ganga is the beginning of water bodies cleaning mission. We will come to Cauvery, Godavari and all southern rivers also because we want to clean all rivers and water bodies. That is our mission,” he said addressing an International Youth Conclave at Ethiraj College on Saturday. The minister said the government was committed to mitigate pollution in all its forms air, water and land. The government would focus more on power generation from renewable energy like solar, wind, and nuclear, which do not pollute, he said, recalling Modi’s success in solar power generation in Gujarat when he was the CM.
Mr Javadekar said the government has identified 17 sectors with over 3,000 highly polluting industrial units that have been told to install round-the-clock real-time monitoring devices to analyse air pollution and the quality of effluents.They would have to adhere to government rules regarding pollution-mitigation and there would be no compromise on this issue, the minister said.
Taking a swipe at the previous UPA government, he said his environment ministry at that time was known as “the roadblock ministry, speed-breaker ministry and the famous J-tax ministry”. Applications for project clearances moved very slowly for obvious reasons. “The first challenge I faced on taking charge was to bring transparency.” The processes have been simplified and made more transparent with introduction of online application for environmental clearances, he said, adding applicants can track their files using the unique ID allotted to them.
Many decisions, including granting environment clearance for blacktop roads to benefit the Indian Army along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China were taken in swift time.
“There is now no need for a paper-weight as the file is moving real fast,” the minister said.
