New Delhi, Oct 23 (IANS): The National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG)'s next target is to pace up the cleanliness process in the tributaries of the Ganga in the next five years, Jal Shakti Secretary Pankaj Kumar said on Saturday.

"NMCG has cadres like 'Ganga Prehri' (Guardians of Ganga) and 'Ganga Doot'. They are trained volunteers who work among the local communities to create public awareness as to how crucial the cleanliness of the river is to keep it alive."

"The most polluted stretches of our rivers have already been identified by the Central Pollution Control Board and are being monitored," Kumar added during a cleanliness drive by the Jal Shakti Ministry and WAPCOS at Chhath Ghat at ITO on Saturday morning.

Speaking on the success of the NMCG project, he said, "The upper portion of Ganga stem in Uttarakhand has already been cleaned. Now the work is going on in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. In the process we are also targeting 'ghats' of major cities for modernising them. This all would need a mass movement as rivers and their surroundings cannot be kept clean without help from the masses. That is why spreading public awareness about all this is yet another focus of ours."

The Jal Shakti Ministry is targeting gram panchayats and water and sanitation committees in villages to create a public awareness campaign.

Speaking to IANS about the status of 'Swacch Bharat Mission 1.0', Kumar said, "If you see Swacch Bharat Mission 1.0, we did achieve our target in a substantial manner by constructing more than 10 crore toilets and bringing in a mass behavioural change which has also been noted by international agencies. So there has been a lot of progress and it has been possible only because of wide participation of people and that is going to be our approach for Swacch Bharat 2.0."