Water pollution and river rejuvenation

Prelims and Mains

The test of a river cleaning programme is not the plants it builds but whether a stretch of the river stops failing the bathing water standard. In the Central Pollution Control Board's count for 2025, one stretch of the Ganga did.

• Namami Gange, launched in 2014 and run by the National Mission for Clean Ganga, pays for sewage treatment in the Ganga basin and for the surveys of the river's fauna.
• The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) lists a river stretch as polluted when its biochemical oxygen demand stays above the bathing water standard, and drops the stretch once it complies.
• The CPCB's Polluted River Stretch report 2025 left the Haridwar to Sultanpur stretch in Uttarakhand off the list.
• Stretches in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal improved in part.
• Namami Gange has created 4,263 million litres a day of sewage treatment capacity, and 146 of its 219 sewage projects are complete.
• Minimum environmental flow norms for the Ganga, notified in October 2018, are monitored by the Central Water Commission.
• Surveys counted 3,037 gharials, and a National Gharial Conservation Action Plan followed.
• The Gangetic dolphin estimate for 2021 to 2023 is 6,327, and India's first Dolphin Rescue Ambulance is in service.