Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav dismissed the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s suggestion, without naming him, that the Ganga could be cleaned in a manner similar to the way in which the Sabarmati river was cleaned in Gujarat.
Mr. Modi made this observation at the BJP’s ‘Vijay Shankhnad’ rally in Varanasi on Friday.
Talking to reporters at the sidelines of a function to mark the launch of the U.P. Skill Development Mission here on Saturday, Mr. Yadav said the Ganga does not flow in Gujarat. The river originates in the mountains of Uttarakhand and falls into the Bay of Bengal. The Chief Minister remarked that he did not need tutoring from other States on how the Ganga could be cleaned.
Mr. Yadav said a strategy should be chalked out by the Planning Commission for cleaning the Ganga as the river could not be purified in a day.
The river’s water has a unique quality, he said.
