Government had formed 2 committees on cleaning of river Ganga and prepares adequate law on it.

• Girdhar Malviya committee given the charge to prepare a draft law on clean and uninterrupted Ganga. It recently submitted its draft model law to the government on cleanup of river Ganga and its tributaries.
• Madhav Chitale committee was formed to prepare guidelines for de-silting the river stretch between Bhimgauda (Uttarakhand) and Farakka (West Bengal).

Recently, Uttarakhand High Court has given Ganga and Yamuna the status of ‘living rivers’, thus allowing petitions on behalf of rivers from anyone.

Girdhar Malviya Committee

1..The committee recognized the challenges being faced to maintain the wholesomeness - Nirmalta (cleanliness) and Aviralta (uninterrupted flow) of Ganga perpetuated due to

• Over stressed water demand from agricultural, domestic and industrial sectors
• Sustaining the religious faith, historical and social belief
• No possible increase in availability of water in river course in comparison to the increasing demands
• Apprehension of climate change affects.

2.It has also come up with a draft model law 

Significance

• A law with penalties defined for individual acts of polluting Ganga will deter the polluters to pollute rivers.
• Target specific timeline will enable the government to effectively plan the cleaning of the rivers.
• Such law combined with the High court judgment of living rivers would help in the easy use of the judicial process to keep the executive government accountable to clean Ganga.

Challenges

• The draft law tries to give exceptions. These exceptions could be hard to monitor because of their subjectiveness.                                          
• Civil society also needs to be involved in the monitoring and the implementing process which has not been explicitly dealt in the draft law.

Chitale Committee Recommendations

1.>It observes that it is impossible to apply a “one-size-fits-all? approach to sediment management and control because of regionally-specific issues like topography, river control structures, soil and water conservation measures, tree cover, and riparian land-use or land disturbance having impact on sediment loads in rivers.
2.>It has recommended to -

• Study reach wise sediment transport processes along with establishing annual sediment budgets to guide de-silting activities
• Prepare annual reports (Sand registry) describing the previous de-silting/ dredging activity.
• Entrust a technical institute to conduct the sediment budget, morphological and flood routing studies that would examine and confirm the necessity of the de-silting of the reach under consideration.
• River morphological studies should be carried out to initiate in-stream channel improvement works.

3.>Catchment Area Treatment and Watershed Development works, along with good agricultural practices and river bank protection are necessary to reduce silt inflow.
4.>Instead of “keeping the silt away”, strategy to “giving the silt way” should be adopted.
5.>In case where constriction is causing large scale siltation, de-siltation along the preselected channel to deepen and attract the flow could be tried to guide the main course of flow.
6.>De-silting of the confluence points, especially with huge silt carrying tributaries, such as Ghagra, Sone, etc., may be necessary to make confluence hydraulically efficient.
7.>The Ganga Flood Control Commission should be entrusted with additional mandate to carry out necessary studies on sediment management in river Ganga.

Significance

• Recommendations if implemented can improve hydraulic performance of the river and also be a solution towards reducing the impact of pollution of rivers.
• Desiltation of this stretch would also provide easier navigability of water transport. Promotion to river transport would also have ancillary benefits like lesser pollution, more employment etc.

Challenges
 The de-siltation may result into some adverse impacts like River bed degradation, Bank erosion, Channel widening, lowering of water surface elevations etc. This should be prevented to the maximum extent.