Ganga Flood Control Board's 19th Meeting Launches Punah Bharan App

Union Minister of Jal Shakti C. R. Patil took the chair at the 19th meeting of the Ganga Flood Control Board, held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on 27 October 2026. The Ministry of Jal Shakti issued an account of the proceedings on 29 October 2026.

Who attended

• Suvendu Adhikari, Chief Minister of West Bengal
• Ram Nath Thakur, Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare
• Prof. K. V. Raju, Member, NITI Aayog
• Vijay Kumar Choudhary, Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar and the state's Water Resources Minister
• Swatantra Dev Singh, Jal Shakti Minister of Uttar Pradesh, along with representatives of the Ganga Basin states and senior officials of the Centre and the states

What the Board is

The Government of India set up the Ganga Flood Control Board on 18 April 1972 so that work on floods, bank erosion and drainage trouble across the Ganga Basin could be planned and carried out in step rather than state by state. The Union Minister of Jal Shakti always chairs it. Its membership covers the Chief Ministers of the basin states, or people they nominate, together with representatives of the central ministries concerned, and the Chairman of the Ganga Flood Control Commission acts as its Member Secretary. The Board is therefore the senior forum where the Centre and the states settle how flood works in the basin will proceed.

A new app for recharging groundwater

At the meeting the minister released the Punah Bharan Mobile App. It has been built by the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics working with the National Water Mission. The app is meant to pick out, on scientific grounds, the places where artificial recharge of groundwater will actually work, so that recharge structures are not built where they serve little purpose.

Reworking the Commission

The Board went into a revised mandate and a restructuring for the Ganga Flood Control Commission. The new arrangement would give the Commission a firmer role in basin-level flood planning, in examining flood management schemes before they are cleared, and in studying how rivers change course and carry sediment. It also provides for a Flood Management Information System. The Board expects the change to tighten coordination, sharpen technical scrutiny and cut delays in decisions.

Other decisions discussed

Members took up the preparation of risk-based master plans for the basin, whether the waterways and ventways left under bridges are wide enough, the quality of detailed project reports, and the need to finish flood works on time using modern survey methods. Attention also went to drainage congestion, statutory clearances and the removal of bottlenecks that hold up projects on the ground.