Namami Gange: A matter of Pride. We are committed to ensure a clean and uninterrupted flow of river Ganga from Gangotri to Ganga Sagar. We will ensure that the sewerage infrastructure to deal with 100% of the waste water from the Ganga towns is completed and is functioning effectively, and take steps to enhance the river flow… Achieve the goal of Clean Ganga by 2022.

The 2019 Sankalp Patra's Ganga commitment is unusually precise for a manifesto, and it names a date. It promises "a clean and uninterrupted flow of river Ganga from Gangotri to Ganga Sagar", undertakes that "the sewerage infrastructure to deal with 100% of the waste water from the Ganga towns is completed and is functioning effectively", and lists among its targets: "Achieve the goal of Clean Ganga by 2022."

Two of those words do the work. Not built — "completed and functioning effectively". Not most — "100%".

The only CAG performance audit of Namami Gange covers 2014-15 to 2016-17, which is before this promise rather than during it. That makes it useless as a verdict on delivery and valuable as a baseline: it records the state of the programme at the moment the 2019 commitment was made, and therefore what the promise was asking the programme to do in three years.

On sewage — the whole of the "100% of waste water" undertaking — the audit's finding is that the programme had not yet finished ordering the work. "As per the target dates, award for the work of all the Sewage Treatment Plants was to be completed by September 2016. National Mission for Clean Ganga is yet to finalise and approve Detailed Project Reports for projects totalling 1,397 MLD capacity as of August 2017." Of the 46 sewage, interception and canal projects that had been sanctioned, "there were delays in 26 projects costing ₹2,710.14 crore".

On money, the constraint was not the budget. "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 sitting unspent at the mission. The Clean Ganga Fund — the vehicle for public and diaspora donations — held ₹198.14 crore and had spent none of it, "due to non-finalization of action plan."

On the plan, which is what "uninterrupted flow" depends on: long-term action plans contracted to a consortium of IITs were still not final more than six and a half years after signing, so the mission "does not have a river basin management plan even after a lapse of more than eight years of National Ganga River Basin Authority notification." And the mission was running 44 to 65 per cent short of staff, with no proposal made to strengthen the state programme groups.

Sewage treatment capacity on the Ganga has grown considerably since 2017, and no audit we hold covers that period, so this fact-check does not assert what happened to the 2022 target. What it can state is that the promise of complete, functioning sewerage for every Ganga town by 2022 was made from a starting point where the contracts had not been awarded, the plan had not been written, and most of the money had not been spent. Our verdict is lacks context.