Waterman Dr Rajendra Singh, who was in Kolkata in connection with the Ganga Sadbhavna Yatra on Wednesday, said that the Centre has not fulfilled any promise it made before coming to power.
"PM Narendra Modi has not fulfilled any promises. We had wanted and he had promised a clean Ganga, but that never happened. Its water is full of pollutants from the city," Singh said. He also alleged that after becoming PM, Modi was more concerned with the welfare of big corporate houses and lets them go scot-free despite their role in polluting the Ganga.
"What Modi is doing now is a corporate-driven democracy. People are being arrested for throwing flowers in Ganga, when millions of tons of effluents from industries are dumped into the Ganga with impunity," Singh said and added that Ganga had become a way of earning money by many, in the name of its preservation.
He said that river Ganga had been sent to the ICU and that even a project such as Namami Ganga was unable to clean the river. "In the name of rejuvenation of Ganga, only beautification of ghats is being done while actual cleaning and continuity of Ganga is still a far dream," he added.
The Ganga Sadbhavna Yatra campaign intends to include people from all walks of life, irrespective of faith, caste, community, by creating awareness about the issue.
The yatra has covered a distance of 2,500 km, having started from Uttarakhand and continued through Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand to end in Kolkata. During the 111-day journey, people and communities living along the banks of the Ganga, had been made aware of the importance of its conservation.
