NGT forms panel to look into units polluting Ganga

New Delhi, February 10

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has set up a committee to look into the grossly polluting industries located along the banks of the Ganga and inform it about the quantum of sewage they were discharging into the river.

A bench headed by NGT chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar constituted the panel comprising member secretary of the Central Pollution Control Board, Uttar Pradesh, and the Uttarakhand Pollution Control Board, CEO of Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam, Environment Ministry Director and a professor from the IIT, Roorkee.

“The committee shall submit a report on actual effluent discharge from each drain that joins the Ganga and measure load on points where sewage treatment plants are sought to be constructed under Phase-I B of the judgement (Haridwar to Kanpur),” the bench said while warning that if the directions are not complied with, it would impose heavy costs.

The green panel also asked the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board to inform it about the industrial units of tannery, paper and pulp, textile, located along the banks of the Ganga, to submit their stand before it. It told the committee to look into the issue of bodies of humans and animals being dumped into the river and submit its report within three weeks.

The green panel has divided the work of cleaning the river into different segments—Gaumukh to Haridwar, Haridwar to Kanpur, Kanpur to the border of Uttar Pradesh, border of Uttar Pradesh to border of Jharkhand and the border of Jharkhand to Bay of Bengal.

On December 11 last year, the tribunal had imposed a complete ban on the use of polythene bags of any kind from Gaumukh to Haridwar along the river from February 1 and decided to slap a penalty of Rs 5,000 per day on erring hotels, dharamshalas and ashrams spewing waste into the river.—PTI