Seasonal Chandigarh streams choking: MP sounds alarm in LS

Chandigarh MP Manish Tewari flagged rampant and unchecked pollution across Chandigarh’s three seasonal streams in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, asserting that the city’s globally admired aesthetic identity was being steadily eroded by environmental neglect.

Speaking during the winter session, Tewari said the capital region’s natural drainage system -- once integral to its urban design -- had degenerated to a point where “it has become difficult to even breathe around them”.

Tewari said Chandigarh’s environmental crisis was deepening simultaneously across the Sukhna Choe on the eastern flank, the Northern Choe through the city’s centre, and the Patiala ki Rao in the west. Each, he said, now carried the burden of sewage discharge, garbage dumping and chronic administrative indifference.

The MP reminded the House that he had already filed a starred question seeking accountability and a comprehensive plan from the Centre, but the government had failed to offer clarity on how it intended to halt the ongoing degradation of these natural watercourses.

Drawing from the government’s recent admission that wastewater continues to enter the N-Choe, Tewari said this disclosure further validated the severity of the crisis he raised today. He underlined that the Centre itself had acknowledged continued wastewater discharge, lapses in monitoring, absence of rejuvenation plans and failure of several STPs to transmit real-time effluent data -- pointing to systemic environmental misgovernance.

Turning to the city’s festering solid-waste crisis, Tewari said the Dadumajra garbage dump remained a symbol of repeated broken promises. He said the administration initially committed before the NGT, the Punjab and Haryana High Court and a Parliamentary Committee that the dump would be cleared by November 2024. The deadline was then pushed to March 2025, then July 2025, and now to November 30, 2025 -- “and yet the mountains of waste only keep growing.”

Invoking Chandigarh’s legacy as the first planned city of independent India, conceptualised by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and celebrated worldwide for its green architecture, Tewari said the city could not be allowed to slide into irreversible ecological decline.

He appealed to the Centre to step in decisively. “If the Government of India wants to retain Chandigarh as a Union Territory, then the Home Minister and the Environment Minister must be apprised of the situation so that the city’s world-renowned beauty can be preserved,” he urged the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, who was present in the House.

Why it matters

Chandigarh’s natural drainage system --comprising Sukhna Choe, the Northern Choe and Patiala ki Rao -- was central to Le Corbusier’s original city plan. These streams form the city’s ecological backbone, interlinking green belts, carrying monsoon runoff and feeding into larger regional basins.

Pollution in these streams is not episodic but chronic. The Centre recently confirmed waste-water flow into the N-Choe, lapses in monitoring, illegal dumping, gaps in sewage-treatment oversight and absence of rejuvenation plans. Similar degradation now affects all three seasonal streams, signalling a systemic environmental collapse.

What it means

Unchecked contamination threatens public health, groundwater quality and Chandigarh’s identity as a model planned city. Years of untreated discharge, waste accumulation and infrastructural failure risk turning natural stormwater channels into permanent sewage drains. Without urgent intervention, the ecological decline could become irreversible, erasing the very attributes that define Chandigarh’s global reputation.