By IANS,
Ghaziabad: Former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president and Ghaziabad MP Rajnath Singh Monday said the Ganga Action Plan has failed to clean the holy river even after an expenditure of over Rs.2,000 crore.
Supporting former party colleague Uma Bharti’s ‘Save Ganga’ initiative, the BJP leader said: “We support Umaji in this noble cause.”
“The decision to support Umaji is beyond the party and political lines. Since Ganga is the life line of Indians, there should not be a politics over it,” Rajnath Singh said.
Uma Bharti, who is on a fast in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar, Sunday called upon leaders to jointly save the river.
Rajnath Singh said the Ganga river basin was the largest in India and the fourth largest in the world, with a basin (catchment area) covering 861,404 sq km.
The state of Uttar Pradesh alone is responsible for over 50 percent of the pollutants entering the river along its entire journey to the sea.
It has a total length of 2,525 km, out of which 1,425 km is in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, 475 km in Bihar and 625 km in West Bengal.
There are more than 50 drains carrying untreated sewage into the river, he said.