NEW DELHI: India Inc should undertake Ganga cleaning and river rejuvenation projects under their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes, road transport and water resources minister Nitin Gadkari said on Thursday.
Gadkari also said the government would soon launch 150 projects for Ganga cleaning and development.
Corporations can build ghats, crematoriums and adopt river development projects as the government is looking to enter into memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with the private sector, the minister said at PHD Chamber’s annual session here.
Section 135 of the Companies Act 2013 requires companies above a certain size to spend at least 2% of their average net profit for the immediately preceding three financial years on CSR activities. Gadkari also said the government would soon launch 150 projects for Ganga cleaning and development. The projects, he said, aim at containing discharge of polluted water in the river and recycling the waste water to produce bio-CNG to power transport fleet.
“Bigger cities such as Kanpur and Mathura pollute the Ganga more. We will start 150 projects by March 2018 to check discharge of polluted water into the Ganga based on recycling,” he said. The minister also said the pollution levels in Ganga would be down by 50% in the next two years.
LOGISTICS COSTS: The government is open to the idea of providing infrastructure connectivity to private logistics parks, road transport and highways secretary YS Malik said. Speaking at the event, Malik said the government wants logistics parks to be the focus of private investors. “We are willing to provide connectivity wherever needed.
Alongside, we are considering whether we can acquire land on our own to build logistics parks. Such steps would ensure that the cost of logistics movement in the country could be brought down,” he said. Malik also said that road construction projects that have a rate of return of more than 15% would preferably be awarded on the build-operate-transfer model as such projects would attract more private interest.
He said other projects could be taken on government-funded engineering, procurement and construction mode and could be monetised once they are operational.
Article Source: Economic Times