Urban River Management Plan: A Strategic Framework for Managing Urban River Stretches in the Ganga River Basin

Centre for River-Sensitive Cities

Contributors: Victor R. Shinde, Uday Bhonde, Rahul Sachdeva, Nikita Madan, Banibrata Choudhury, Shivani Saxena, Jyoti Verma, Pratima Marwah,

The overall objective of this document is to assist cities along the Ganga River to improve the state of the river in their stretch. While the central focus is on the Ganga, the document also applies to other rivers flowing through these cities. The document proposes a planning framework called Urban River Management Plan (URMP) to achieve the overall objective. The URMP will help the river cities systematically and holistically plan for interventions required to revive and maintain the rivers within their limits in a sustainable manner. The URMP is embedded in the central idea that maintaining healthy rivers is crucial to enhance liveability and productivity in the cities. The National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) and the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) have developed this common URMP framework for all river cities in the Ganga River Basin. This guidance document explains the various elements of the URMP framework. It also provides detailed directions on how the river cities should prepare their own URMPs. It is expected that all river cities in the Ganga River Basin with population more than 1 lakh will develop their URMPs in the next two to five years.