The clean Ganga mission recently got a boost after the Centre sanctioned six new sewage treatment plants (STPs) for different cities and towns along the river in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. These STPs, cleared under the national mission for clean Ganga (NMCG), will come up in Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh; Beur, Karmalichak and Saidpur (Patna) in Bihar; and Budge Budge and Barrackpore in West Bengal at an estimated cost of Rs. 1,058 crore! Thus, the environment ministry has set the ball rolling by setting up the treatment of over 113 million litres per day (MLD) of sewage.

There are a number of other plans lined up for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project, which are to be announced in due course after studying the feasibility reports. According to the environment minister, Prakash Javadekar, these new plants will add up the capacity to treat sewage in these cities\towns. The Centre will bear 70 percent of the cost of these new projects.

The minister also talked about the poor functioning of the existing STPs in different states due to shortage of electricity and expressed the need to ensure proper functioning of these plants in future during a debate session in the Lok Sabha. He also pointed out that the (existing) STPs do not operate and hence the filth contaminates the rivers. This can be stopped only if the STPs run 24x7. Amongst the newly sanctioned STPs, the Barrackpore plant will have the capacity to treat 24 MLD, whereas the one at Budge Budge will treat 9.3 MLD of polluted water. Similarly, the plant at Beur and Karmalichak will treat 43 MLD and 37 MLD of sewage, respectively.