Stretches of the original channel of the Ganga in the state have been submerged under rubbish, illegal buildings and a metro line.
Adi Ganga, the nearly 75 km long original channel of national river Ganga, has been hijacked at several places. Three centuries back, this was the main outflow of the Ganga to the Bay of Bengal. Today it is a sewer buried under garbage and the Metro rail network, encroached upon, converted into personal ponds and homes.
The destruction of the Ganga has been most rapid in the last three decades, the period when nearly Rs 200 crore has been pumped into its restoration. Not to mention that another project worth Rs 600 crore is in the anvil – with the World Bank talking about funding Kolkata Municipal Corporation for “pollution abatement of the Adi Ganga”under the National Ganga River Basin project. This project, though, is behind schedule even before it has started.
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