Indian Waterways Development in Big Way
The ongoing project on national waterways ‘Jal Marg Vikas’ is a Rs 5,400-crore World Bank funded project on the Ganga, being developed between Allahabad and Haldia to cover a distance of 1620 km.
The Jal Marg Vikas Project (JMVP) for capacity augmentation of National Waterway-1 (NW-1) between Haldia and Varanasi is being implemented with the technical and financial assistance of the World Bank.
The shipping ministry has released details about the present status of Multimodal terminal at Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, multimodal terminal at Sahibganj, Jharkhand and multimodal terminal at Haldia, West Bengal under planned JMVP multi modal terminals.
Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), inter-alia, has been mandated with the responsibility to develop and maintain the National Waterways (NWs) for shipping and navigation purpose.
In order to maintain the navigable depth in the NWs, various conservancy works like dredging, bandalling and river training works are undertaken to deal with the problem of silting of the navigational channel.
The Inland Water Transport is recognized to be environment friendly and less polluting as compared to road & rail transportation. The issues related to pollution due to movement of vessels on inland waterways are addressed under the provisions of the Inland Vessels Act, 1917, implemented by the State Governments.