Mamata Banerjee on Friday sought a concrete action plan by New Delhi to save people vulnerable to the erosion of the Ganga in Murshidabad and Malda districts.

The Bengal chief minister raised the demand during the second National Ganga Council Meeting held in Calcutta on Friday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired the meeting through video conferencing from Gujarat after performing the last rites of his mother who passed away on Friday early morning.

Chief ministers of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand also attended the meeting. The other participants were Union ministers who are members of the council.

On behalf of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav attended the meeting.

Sources aware of the confabulations at the session said the issues raised by the Bengal chief minister drew the attention of all those present.

Mamata described how people living in several blocks of Malda and Murshidabad had become the victims of the erosion of the Ganga’s banks.

She mentioned how regular erosion at those places had turned so critical that thousands of people were living in homes, which were less than five meters from the river banks.

“The chief minister made it clear that the erosion problem intensified since the construction of the Farakka barrage. The chief minister had earlier pointed out that the barrage authorities were not looking into the issue seriously, which endangered the lives of thousands of people.... As her repeated attempts to draw the Centre’s attention to the problem failed, the chief minister raised the issue again on a proper platform,” said a source.

Mamata had written several letters to the Centre to look into the erosion issue. On Friday, the chief minister demanded that a Flood Control Commission be set up to monitor the condition and initiate proper steps to save the lives and properties of thousands of people.

The chief minister painted a picture of how erosion along the Ganga affected the lives of common people.

Mamata gave the example of Dhulian in Murshidabad where the number of slums was increasing rapidly owing to the large-scale displacement of people engendered by the erosion. Dhulian has a population density of 15,314 per sqkm whereas the figure is 1,029 in the rest of the state. This happened only because people are being forced to live in unhygienic conditions by setting up slums along the riverbank.

Mamata also demanded that a policy be developed by NITI Ayog to prevent coastal erosion which was also causing trouble to lakhs of people in Bengal. The coastal erosion, resulting in the rise in the sea level, has affected the weather, river flows and crop production; and triggered the displacement of people.

Mamata raised the demand for regular dredging in rivers in Bengal to save the state from floods almost every year.

Modi said work on five new schemes for Bengal, with an outlay of Rs 1,500 crore, had already started.

In a tweet, the Prime Minister said the council meeting was a great opportunity to discuss ways to further strengthen the Ganga mission. He said he had spoken about ways to enhance cleanliness efforts, including expanding the network of sewage treatment plants at small towns.

The meeting emphasised ways to enhance various forms of herbal farming along the Ganga, Modi said.