The Act was enacted to make provisions for existing national waterways and to provide for the declaration of certain inland waterways to be national waterways. It also provides for the regulation and development of these waterways for the purposes of shipping and navigation. The Act identifies an additional 106 waterways as national waterways. The Act repeals the five Acts that declare the existing national waterways. The inland waterways specified at serial numbers 6 to 111 in the Schedule along with their limits given in column (3) thereof are hereby declared to be national waterways for the purposes of shipping and navigation. The Act was tabled in May 2015 by the Transport and Shipping Minister of the present Central Government, Mr Nitin Gadkari. The Bill plans to convert 106 rivers and creeks across India into waterway canals, supposedly for the purposes of ‘eco-friendly transport’ of cargo, coal, industrial raw materials, and tourism.