Morcha activists accuse PPCB of concealing facts, write to Speaker

Activists of the ‘Kale Pani Da Morcha’ campaign have submitted a written complaint to Punjab Vidhan Sabha Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan regarding the concealment of important documents and facts from the House committee by officials of the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) to illegally benefit the dyeing industry.

The activists requested the Vidhan Sabha Speaker to take strict action against officials responsible. They said the Vidhan Sabha committee regarding the Buddha Dariya and the Ghaggar river was constituted by the Speaker on July 25, 2022. It’s chairman was Daljit Singh Grewal Bhola. A total of 12 MLAs were its members.

The committee presented its interim report in the House on March 11, 2024. After carefully reading the report, it was found that the main objective of this Vidhan Sabha committee was to “scrutinise the issue of dirty water falling into the Buddha Dariya and Ghaggar”. The committee held a total of 30 meetings till the preparation of this report and officials from many departments of the state government also participated in these.

They added that on August 13, 2024, an important and surprising revelation was made by the Central Pollution Control Board in NGT case number 546/2024, that the three treatment plants being run by the dyeing industry of Ludhiana have been built illegally and are being run in complete disregard of the law. They produced the environmental clearances of 2013 and 2014 obtained from the Union Environment Ministry, according to which these treatment plants were never allowed to discharge even their treated water into the Buddha Dariya. On the contrary, they had a very clear condition, that the industries could not discharge their treated water into the dariya at all. They could treat this water and use it themselves or use it for irrigation if they had space.

It was a surprising revelation because such an “illegal work” was being carried out under the nose of the Punjab Pollution Control Board for a decade and the people of Punjab were seeing these papers for the first time. Even more surprising was the re-reading of the report of the Vidhan Sabha Committee, which revealed that this most important fact was not even mentioned in this 81-page report, rather the entire thrust of the Vidhan Sabha committee was focused on other trivial matters.

Recently, a video was released on Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal’s Facebook site in which dyeing workers themselves made clear that they have been polluting the Buddha Dariya on a large scale for a long time, yet the PPCB is seen shying away from taking action.

This is a betrayal of the people of Punjab, claimed the activists of Kale Pani Da Morcha, demanding that it should be immediately investigated at the highest level and the Chairman, Member Secretary and other officials of the PPCB should face action for negligence.