Existence of Ganga in danger, claims Environment Scientist

"There have been only three meetings of NGRBA in the past four years. Now since Narendra Modi himself has mission Clean Ganga on his priority list, so it is high time to make NGRBA functional," he said.

Tripathi, also a coordinator for Centre for Environmental Science and Technology at the Banaras Hindu University, has been associated with the cause since 1972.

The Centre has given Ganga the status of national river and constituted NGRBA in February 2009.

The objective of the authority is to ensure effective abatement of pollution and conservation of Ganga by adopting a river basin approach for comprehensive planning and management.

"Government has declared Ganga as a national river but till now there is no policy or planning made in this regard. Ganga flows through five states (Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal) and they exploit it in their way," Tripathi said.

"Centre gives 85 per cent of funds and rest 15 per cent is contributed by states but there has been no monitoring at any level. After five years, you come to know about the failure of the plan but who is accountable for that," he asked.

He maintained that the Centre should see the problem in its entirety.