punjab

Updated: Jul 13, 2016 21:51 IST

Environmental activist Balbir Singh Seechewal’s model of cleaning water bodies, successfully employed in Punjab, is being adopted by more than 1,600 villages situated on the banks of Ganga for the river’s rejuvenation.

Seechewal shared this information while talking to media on the sidelines of ‘Challenges and Strategies for Management of Water in Rural Areas’, organised by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard).

Seechewal said sarpanches of 1,657 villages located near Ganga in Uttarakhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Jharkhand had seen the effectiveness of the model and were impressed by it. “Under Seechewal model, sewage passes through different wells for removing impurity, and then the water is shifted to a pond for irrigating crops. This model is very simple and we have found that water with total dissolved solids (TDS) of up to 2,000 can be used for irrigation,” he said.

The noted activist is credited with rejuvenation of 160-km-long Kali Bein rivulet, which originates in Hoshiarpur and traverses the Doaba region to join the Sutlej-Beas confluence near Harike wetland. Union minister Uma Bharti reportedly met Seechewal last year, and said the model used for Kali Bein will be replicated for cleaning Ganga.

Read: To clean Yamuna in Delhi, AAP govt to use Seechewal model from Punjab