The Ganga's cleanliness cannot be ensured as long as silt continues to choke the holy river, chief minister Nitish Kumar emphasised on Thursday in New Delhi.
He said siltation was the biggest hurdle to the river's flow and urged environmentalists and experts to find out suitable solutions to help chalk out future programmes to save the Ganga.
"We want to weep when we see the condition of the Ganga today. Heavy accumulation of silt and several other complex problems arising out of it are affecting Bihar and other states. Clean Ganga is not possible without incessant flow," Nitish said.
The chief minister was speaking after inaugurating a two-day seminar on "Siltation as obstacle in the incessant flow of the Ganga: Problems And Solutions" at India International Centre (IIC) in New Delhi.
Political pundits feel Nitish's move to organise a national seminar in New Delhi on the Ganga is an effort to create a parallel discourse challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi and exposing the "hollowness" of the Centre's Namami Gange project for cleaning the holy river.
Namami Gange has not yet come up with a plausible solution to the Ganga's siltation problem, which many experts also cite as the reason behind frequent floods in states such as Bihar.
Though Nitish said the incessant flow of the holy river was not a political issue for him, the presence of Congress MP and former Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh, retired Supreme Court Justice V. Gopala Gowda, scientist-turned-monk G.D. Agrawal, Ganga activist monk Swaamishreeh Avimukteshwaranand, "waterman" Rajendra Singh, Gandhian social worker S.N. Subba Rao and several others from different walks of life at the seminar indicated the Bihar chief minister's national push for the Ganga issue.
Nitish also demanded a proper policy for silt management and pointed out that the Ganga's incessant flow was an issue connected to the environment as well as the nation.
"Steps will have to be taken to maintain the incessant flow. The entire course of the river is filled with silt, which has been accumulating after the construction of the Farakka Barrage in Bengal. It has led to floodwater stagnating for a long time in Buxar, Patna and Bhagalpur," the chief minister said.
Nitish expressed anguish over the destruction that Bihar has to suffer almost every year because of floods and stagnation of floodwater.
He pointed out that the Bihar government had spent Rs 1,058 crore on anti-erosion work in the past five years. He also pointed out that Ganga's cleanliness was closely connected to the survival of the Gangetic dolphin.
Nitish expressed hope that the seminar would would produce good results. The two-day international conference on incessant Ganga in Patna in February this year had provided several research works and those were being used to determine the future course of action, he added.
