Reiterating his Government’s zero tolerance to river pollution, Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Wednesday ordered a crackdown on polluting industries in the State with stringent enforcement of laws and regulations governing discharge of effluents into the rivers.

The Government will not allow pollution to damage the people’s health at any cost, whether in towns or villages, the Chief Minister asserted, issuing a series of directives to the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) and other concerned agencies or departments to take stringent action against any violation of the law in this regard.

Anyone found violating the provisions of the anti-pollution laws should be immediately prosecuted, he ordered in a meeting also attended by local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, Environment Minister OP Soni, Revenue Minister Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria, among others.

Strict action will be taken against all polluting units, as promised by him in the Vidhan Sabha earlier, warned the Chief Minister, adding that neither the industry nor the municipalities would be allowed to flow any effluents into the rivers without treating them.

Capt Amarinder, chairing a high-level meeting to review the situation in the wake of the recent incident of leakage of molasses into the Beas river, instructed the pollution control board to identify and take action against any industrial unit found discharging its untreated industrial waste into the rivers, thus causing pollution and health hazards to the citizens.

He directed the Board to keep a strict check on untreated inflow of industrial effluent in the rivers, especially at Buddah Nullah, ludhiana, Kala Sanghian Drain Jalandhar, Patiala and Amritsar.

The Chief Minister also directed the Chief Secretary to prepare a comprehensive river cleaning plan with a clear timeline for its implementation.

lambasting the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its MlA Sukhpal Singh Khaira for playing political games over such a serious issue, Capt Amarinder said that his government was seriously tackling the issue of pollution in a systematic manner.

“Unlike AAP leaders such as Khaira, who are only interested in getting their pictures flashed in newspapers through cheap publicity tactics, I and my government are not interested in showing our faces to the people but on making a change on the ground,” he said.

lashing out at the erstwhile SAD-BJP government for making a mess of the state during 10 years of their misrule, the Chief Minister said that it would take time to streamline things, but all problems were being tackled by his government one by one.

He pointed out that when the government took over, none of the 64 water and sewage treatment plants in the state was functional. The number of functional units had gone up to 18 now, and by the end of the year, 40 of these plants would become operational, he said.

The Chief Minister stressed the need for joint private-government efforts to tackle the problem of pollution, and also called for central support to strengthen the initiatives taken by the Punjab government.

“I had written to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier for assistance to clean up the state’s rivers and would do so again, besides also meeting him personally soon to pressurize the Central Government for support on this critical issue,” said Capt Amarinder.

He said that just as there were central projects to clean up the Ganga and Yamuna, the Punjab rivers of Ravi, Beas and Satluj also needed to be cleaned up, and the state government’s proposal for the same was pending with the Central Government.

Attributing the Beas incident to an accident resulting from record production of cane in this sugar season, the Chief Minister said that the Centre also need to undertake an exercise to ensure that the right amount of cane is produced and sold to the mills for sugar production.

Earlier, during the high-level meeting, the Chief Minister also directed the concerned departments to come out with a comprehensive plan for maintenance of Common Effluent Treatment Plants, Sewage Treatment Plants.

He also asked the Finance Department to make the necessary finances available for making the existing treatment plants functional and setting up of new plants equipped with modern technologies.