Activists thank PM for setting up Ganga authority

New Delhi, March 12 (IANS) A group of social activists of the Save Ganga Movement met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and thanked him for setting up the Ganga River Basin Authority to stop pollution and degradation ofthe river reverred by millions in India.

The authority, set up in February, will consolidate the current piecemeal efforts to clean up the Ganga with an integrated approach that sees the river as an ecological entity.

It will also help address issues of quantity in terms of water flows.

'The newly constituted authority will respond to the increasing pollution of the river and ensure adequate environmental flows so that the development on its banks is sustainable and the life-sustaining river is in no way adversely affected,' said a senior bureaucrat.

The authority chaired by the prime minister will consist of the chief ministers of the Ganga basin states as members alongwith related ministers of the central government.

The delegation consisted of Rama Rauta, Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee, Swami Tejomayanand, Swami Nikhilanand, Bishop Franco Mulakkal and M.C. Mehta.

In November last year the government declared the Ganga as a national river.