'Stop passing the buck'

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh slams governments in Delhi and Haryana for the ongoing blame game on Yamuna river issue

A day after Delhi government announced that it would construct three interceptors to avoid direct discharge of polluted water into the river, the Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh said on Wednesday that Delhi and Haryana should stop passing the buck on Yamuna.



"Both Delhi and Haryana should once and for all stop passing the buck on the Yamuna river issue, which is going on for some time. One day Haryana is blaming Delhi and the next day, Delhi is blaming Haryana. But nothing is done to clean up the river," Ramesh said after inaugurating the National Ambient Noise Monitoring Network (NANM) in Delhi.

Raising concerns over the pollution in the Yamuna, Ramesh said there is 'no water' in the river and that is see is waste dumped by the industrial units of Haryana and Delhi.

Ramesh also said he will chair a meeting with the Delhi and Haryana chief ministers on Sunday to discuss the issues between the two states over the Yamuna and related squabbles and the steps to be taken to stop the pollution of the river.

"I will meet both the chief ministers on Sunday. I am tired of Delhi passing the buck to Haryana and Haryana passing the buck to Delhi. We will sit down and I hope we will have clarity on what steps have to be taken by Haryana and what steps have to be taken by Delhi," he said.

He also said that he had been given a status report by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) after a field visit had identified the steps Haryana and Delhi had to take to stop polluting the Yamuna. "The CPCB has done their bit. Now it is the responsibility of both the (state) governments. Money is not the problem," the minister added.

'Test case'
In February this year, the Supreme Court sought to know the level of pollution in the river Yamuna and directed the Central Pollution Control Board to file a report within two weeks after examining the sample of its water. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice SH Kapadia asked the board to take three water samples near sewerage plant and file the report on pollution levels. The apex court is monitoring the pollution in Yamuna and remedial measures taken by the government.

Is it clean?
Delhi has an installed treatment capacity of 755 MGD through eight water treatment plants. An additional 100 MGD is extracted from the ground. The city has a demand of about 1,080 MGD. There is a shortfall of about 250 MGD. According to estimates only 27 percent of Delhi is authorized. If we work out a consumption of 100-300 lpcd (litres per capita per day), the total demand comes to about 1,500 MGD. The situation is grim as the government has been banking heavily on the Munak canal for supply of an additional 80 million gallons per day (MGD) and had hoped that work on Renuka dam would commence. But both projects have got stuck.