Environmentalists urge CM to review environment policy

After recent cloud burst, flash floods, landslides and sinking of hills in the state, various environmental groups have urged Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu to come out with a new environmental guidelines for Himachal Pradesh so that such natural disasters are not repeated in the future.

Talking to reporters here today KB Ralhan, Subhash Sharma and Suresh Kumar said for the past five years cloudbursts were a common occurrence in Himalayan regions with extreme weather events causing heavy destruction. A recent cloudburst in the past two months followed by flash floods took a toll of 300 lives, drowned nearly 25 villages and damaged over 1,000 roads and other infrastructure in the state, they said.

Keeping in view the gravity of destruction, the government should focus on the implementation of environmental laws in the state with a zero tolerance for violations, they said. The policy should impose a complete ban on felling of trees, cutting of hills and construction of buildings on banks of rivers and rivulets. Besides, the government should allow only selective mining in rivers of the state within the framework of guidelines of National Green Tribunal (NGT) and the Supreme Court issued from time to time.

The Himachal Pradesh government should also withdraw notification issued in 2023, pertaining to use of heavy machinery for mining like JCB, poclain machine and earth movers in the state. While criticising the decision of the state government to allow the use of heavy machinery for the first time in 2023 for mining and extraction of sand and stone from rivers and rivulets, they said it had virtually played havoc with nature.

They said the NGT and the High Court had many times raised concerns over the use of heavy machinery for the extraction of sand, stones and other minerals from rivers in the state.

Environmental groups lodged strong protests, but the government turned a blind eye towards the issue. They said most rivers in the state passed through protected forest, which were eco sensitive zones, where no environmental degradation should be permitted.

“In a significant order, the Supreme Court has directed that each protected forest should have an eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) of 1 km. Mining in national wildlife sanctuaries or national parks and in major rivers should be completely banned,” they added.

Ralhan stressed that the environmental effects of various hydro projects, whether large, medium, small, need to be assessed cumulatively. The construction methodologies for major projects should be contextualised to the Himalayan ecosystem. Building regulations required updating and reinforcement to ensure that the ecology of the Himalayan region was not affected. He said the recent disaster in Himachal Pradesh was as an indicator of such events, which were expected to increase in the near future if necessary steps were not initiated to check environmental degradations.