The environment in Punjab continues to be a casualty as the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) — the State’s nodal agency to control pollution — has neither formulated required environmental standards, nor prepared a comprehensive programme to check water pollution in the State.
Even the interrupted flow of funds left Budha Nallah cleaning project down in the dumps. Budhan Nallah is a major drain passing through ludhiana and enters Sutlej river near village Wallipur carrying treated water from treatment plants and other city waste.
The facts were brought forth by the performance audit on the water pollution in Punjab by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, the report of which was tabled on the last day of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha’s budget session on Tuesday.
The findings come at a time when the Punjab government has declared cleaning of state’s rivers as “state mission” and assured the House that it was being taken up on war footing.
Only recently, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had taken up the issue of pollution in state’s rivers with the Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti who in turn ensured to “treat Satluj river at par with river Ganga in the prestigious National Mission for cleaning and development of rivers across the country”.
The CAG report pointed that the PPCB had “neither formulated environmental standards based on local considerations nor prepared any comprehensive programme for the prevention, control or abatement of water pollution” as required under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and National Environmental Policy, 2006.
The audit of PPCB records showed that it had neither prepared comprehensive programme for prevention of pollution of streams and wells “except for two towns—ludhiana and Mandi Gobindgarh”. At the same time, the state’s Science, Technology and Environment secretary in December 2013 assured that a policy, based on local considerations, would be framed “within six months”.
The audit observed that the PPCB failed to assess the risk to human health from the water borne diseases due to rivers’ pollution and from the presence of harmful substances in the rivers and groundwater, “who were dependent of these water resources for drinking or other purposes”.