The Supreme Court on Wednesday told the Narendra Modi Government that the dream project to restore the Ganga to its pristine glory must be a time-bound and stage-wise plan and cannot drag on for 200 years.
Giving the Centre three-week time, the court directed Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar to file a fresh affidavit spelling out a stage-wise development of the “Clean Ganga plan”. Calling for a multi-pronged approach to achieve the objective, the Bench of Justices TS Thakur and R Banumathi referred to various steps involved in the process, namely to set up sewage treatment plants (STP), treatment of industrial waste and solid waste management.
“Indicate what are the stages through which this process will go and what time it is to take,” the court asked Kumar, giving him time till September 24, the next date of hearing, to file the affidavit. “As a layman we want to understand that if you draw the entire 2,500-kilometre of river and find so much of pollutants, you can suggest that STPs will be completed in Stage I, and solid waste treatment may be in Stage III, to eventually see the dream of the Ganga flowing in its pristine glory,” the court said.
looking at the proposal given in the affidavit filed by National Mission for Clean Ganga Director Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, the court commented, “This goes beyond our understanding. It may be relevant, no doubt, but you have presented a vision plan for 200 years. We are not asking what assistance you get from Japan or elsewhere. We just want to know what minimum a common man should expect in five years, when your Government is at Centre.”
Kumar explained that the Government had carved out long-term and short-term plans to deal with the pollution in the Ganga. He shared data with regard to pollution index of the river sample collected between March and June two years ago that showed significant improvement in water quality ever since the launch of Ganga Action Plan I (in 1985) and GAP II (in 1993). However, the SC pointed out the water of the river at Allahabad was
most polluted and the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), which has to be always less than 3 mg/l, was reported at 6.4 mg/l at Allahabad.
The concern of the court was echoed even by the Solicitor General, who remarked, “Seeing the pollution at Sangam, I refused to take a bath during one of my visits.”
The court asked the Centre to see the urgency behind its suggestion. “People of this generation, at least, must be able to see the river in its pristine glory.”
Proposing a stage-wise development, the court expressed its desire to “cross-check” progress made by the Government at each stage and “assess” the quality of the river water beginning from the higher reaches of the river to downstream when the river passes through urban settlements.
The Central Pollution Control Board informed the court that from Kannauj till Varanasi, the river was most polluted due to the presence of leather and tanning industries near the river, which the Board had failed to rein in. The court asked the Centre to consider the possibility of giving priority to the ecologically sensitive stretch of the river from Gangotri down to Rishikesh as the urban settlements in UP, Bihar, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal required cooperation from respective States to establish sewer lines to connect waste water to STPs.