BJP commits to ensure the cleanliness, purity and uninterrupted flow of the Ganga on priority. In addition, a massive 'Clean Rivers Programme' will be launched across the country driven by people's participation.

The 2014 manifesto gives the Ganga its own heading and makes the commitment in plain terms: "BJP commits to ensure the cleanliness, purity and uninterrupted flow of the Ganga on priority." It adds a second undertaking alongside it — "a massive 'Clean Rivers Programme' will be launched across the country driven by people's participation."

The institutional response came a year later. In May 2015 the government approved the Integrated Ganga Conservation Mission, Namami Gange, as an umbrella programme meant to pull together the initiatives that had been running since the mid-1980s and add better-coordinated ones. The programme exists, it was funded, and it is still running.

The CAG's performance audit of it, tabled on 19 December 2017, covers the first three years — which is most of the term this promise belongs to. Its central finding is that the money was not spent. "Only eight to 63 per cent of the funds were utilised during 2014-15 to 2016-17, as compared to Revised Estimate," with ₹2,133.76 crore "lying unutilised with National Mission for Clean Ganga" on 31 March 2017. The Clean Ganga Fund, the vehicle built to take public and diaspora donations for exactly this purpose, held ₹198.14 crore and had spent none of it: the mission "could not utilize any amount out of the Clean Ganga Fund and the entire amount was lying in banks due to non-finalization of action plan."

Behind the unspent money was an unfinished plan. The mission had contracted a consortium of IITs to produce the long-term action plans; more than six and a half years after signing, they were not finalised, and so "National Mission for Clean Ganga does not have a river basin management plan even after a lapse of more than eight years of National Ganga River Basin Authority notification." A river cannot be cleaned to a plan that does not exist.

Project approvals moved at the same speed. Of 154 detailed project reports from those three years, 71 were approved — and 70 of those "were approved after delays ranging from 26 to 1,140 days", with 54 of the remainder pending at the mission for 120 to 780 days. On sewage, the core of the work: all treatment plant contracts were to be awarded by September 2016, but as of August 2017 the mission "is yet to finalise and approve Detailed Project Reports for projects totalling 1,397 MLD capacity". Of the 46 sewage, interception and canal projects that had been sanctioned, 26 costing ₹2,710.14 crore were running late.

The rural half of the programme did less. Of ₹951.11 crore released across Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal for household latrines, awareness and waste management, ₹490.15 crore was used. And the waste component barely started: "Solid Liquid Waste Management activities were not taken up in any of the identified districts of the States of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal."

Part of the explanation is that the mission was never staffed to do the job. Manpower ran "44 to 65 per cent" short at the national mission through those three years and 20 to 89 per cent short in the state groups, and the mission "did not initiate any proposal for strengthening the human resources of State Programme Management Groups". Enforcement against polluters ran short of its own mandate too: 3,163 of 5,016 due compliance verifications at grossly polluting industries, and 177 of 560 mandatory inspections of sewage treatment plants.

The promise named a priority, and priority is a claim about pace. On the audited record of the term in which it was made, the programme existed but did not move: most of the money unspent, the governing plan unwritten, the sewage contracts unawarded and the staff unhired. Sewage capacity under the programme has grown considerably since 2017, which is outside this audit and outside this promise's term. Our verdict is lacks context — the mission was launched, and in this period it did not deliver what launching it was supposed to achieve.