UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 37 of 150

Correct — C, Make its water pollution free only. The Ganga Action Plan was launched by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in June 1985 with a single, narrowly drawn objective: pollution abatement. Its stated purpose was the interception, diversion and treatment of domestic sewage before it reached the river, and the prevention of toxic and industrial chemical wastes from identified polluting units from entering it. Everything the plan actually built follows from that — trunk sewers, pumping stations, sewage treatment plants, low-cost sanitation, electric and improved wood crematoria, and riverfront works — and nothing in it concerned water supply for farming or the construction of storage works. The word 'only' in the option is not a trap but the point: GAP was deliberately a water-quality programme and not a river-development programme.

• (a)Utilize the river water for irrigation only — Irrigation was never part of GAP's mandate. Canal irrigation from the Ganga is much older and belongs to a different institutional line altogether — the Upper Ganga Canal dates from the 1850s, and irrigation planning sits with irrigation and water-resources departments, not with the pollution-abatement programme launched in 1985.
• (b)Build new dams over the Ganga river valley — GAP built no dams. Its physical works were sewage interception and treatment infrastructure. Dam and barrage construction on the Ganga system is a separate policy stream, and if anything the later river-conservation debate has run against new obstructions on the main stem for the sake of environmental flows.
• (d)None of the above — This would only be right if option (c) failed, and it does not. Candidates reach for 'none of the above' here because they know GAP later grew into a much larger river-management effort under the National River Conservation Plan, the National Ganga River Basin Authority and Namami Gange. But the question asks about the main purpose of the 1985 plan itself, and that purpose was pollution abatement.

The Ganga Action Plan was India's first large river-specific pollution-control programme and it set the template for everything that followed. Its diagnosis was that the river's degradation was driven mainly by untreated municipal sewage from the towns along its banks, with industrial effluent a serious but smaller second, so its instruments were engineering ones: intercept the drains, divert the flow away from the river, treat it, and return it. Phase I, sanctioned at about Rs 862.59 crore, covered 25 Class-I towns — 6 in Uttar Pradesh, 4 in Bihar and 15 in West Bengal. Phase II widened the coverage to 59 towns across five states and generated parallel action plans for the Yamuna, Gomti, Damodar and Mahananda.

The reasoning shortcut is to ask what kind of ministry ran the programme. GAP was an environment-and-forests initiative, not an irrigation or power one, and that alone rules out options (a) and (b). The remaining decision is between (c) and 'none of the above', and it is settled by the date in the stem: 1985. GAP's institutional history since then is a story of successive absorption — merged into the National River Conservation Plan in 1995, superseded by the National Ganga River Basin Authority in 2009 under the Environment (Protection) Act, and folded into the Namami Gange programme in 2014 with the National Mission for Clean Ganga as the executing body. Each successor took a wider view of the basin, but the 1985 plan itself was about making the water clean.

• The Ganga Action Plan was launched by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in June 1985; its object was interception, diversion and treatment of domestic sewage and prevention of toxic and industrial chemical waste from identified polluting units.
• GAP Phase I covered 25 Class-I towns — 6 in Uttar Pradesh, 4 in Bihar, 15 in West Bengal — at a sanctioned cost of about Rs 862.59 crore.
• GAP Phase II extended the effort to 59 towns across five states and led to separate action plans for the Yamuna, Gomti, Damodar and Mahananda.
• GAP was merged into the National River Conservation Plan in 1995; the National Ganga River Basin Authority followed in 2009 and Namami Gange in 2014.
• The plan's works were sewerage and sanitation infrastructure — trunk sewers, pumping stations, sewage treatment plants, low-cost toilets and improved crematoria — with no irrigation or dam component.

• Choosing 'none of the above' because GAP's later successors took on a wider basin-management role — the question asks about the 1985 plan's own purpose
• Confusing pollution abatement with river-water development; GAP built treatment works, not dams or canals
• Mixing up the chronology: GAP 1985, NRCP 1995, NGRBA 2009, Namami Gange 2014

UPPSC asks GAP as a one-line purpose or launch-year question. UPSC prefers the institutional layer above it — the features of the National Ganga River Basin Authority, or which body chairs it — and has also asked, in a compound statement, about GAP Phase II being merged into the National River Conservation Plan. Learn the purpose and the succession of institutions together.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Ganga Action Plan launched in 1985 was subsequently merged into which of the following?

  • (a)National Water Mission
  • (b)National River Conservation Plan
  • (c)Command Area Development Programme
  • (d)National Rural Drinking Water Programme

  Answer(b) National River Conservation Plan — GAP was absorbed into the NRCP in 1995, before the later shift to the NGRBA in 2009 and Namami Gange in 2014.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Consider the following statements about the Ganga Action Plan, 1985: 1. Its central method was the interception, diversion and treatment of domestic sewage. 2. Its first phase covered Class-I towns in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

  • (a)Only 1
  • (b)Only 2
  • (c)Both 1 and 2
  • (d)Neither 1 nor 2

  Answer(c) Both 1 and 2 — Phase I covered 25 Class-I towns, 6 in Uttar Pradesh, 4 in Bihar and 15 in West Bengal, and worked chiefly through sewage interception and treatment.