Ganga waterway environmental clearance delayed 14 times. Here's why

As on date, inland waterways are not included in the list of projects that require prior environmental clearance

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) have, for the past six years, been deliberating on whether the government's World Bank-funded project--the Jal Marg Vikas Project (JMVP) for National Waterway 1--requires environmental clearance. The project on the Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly river systems, announced in July 2014, is scheduled to be completed by December 2023. Meanwhile, the NGT has postponed the matter of its environmental clearance 14 times, documents analysed by IndiaSpend show.

Then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, while presenting the budget for the financial year 2014-15, announced the project and said it was intended