E-Paper
Ensure cleanliness in Sukhna Lake catchment: HC to UT
The Punjab and Haryana high court has directed the Chandigarh administration to ensure no garbage or litter in Sukhna Lake's catchment area and to check the flow of sewage into the channel carrying water to the lake.
The Punjab and Haryana high court has directed the Chandigarh administration to ensure no garbage or litter in Sukhna Lake's catchment area and to check the flow of sewage into the channel carrying water to the lake.
The division bench comprising chief justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and justice Augustine George Masih, however, did not vacate the stay on construction activities in the lake's catchment area put in May last year.
The court was, on Monday, hearing the case in which it had taken suo-motu notice of a media report published in 2011 about drying up of the lake and had been monitoring the case since then.Appearing for the Centre, senior standing counsel Onkar Singh Batalvi sought a week's time from the court for submitting the final report of the National Institute of Hydrology (NIH), Roorkee, on the study of Sukhna Lake.
During the arguments of the case, advocate Tanu Bedi submitted some photographs of the Sukhna Lake's catchment area showing garbage at many places. She also put on record some of the photographs revealing that sewage was being drained out into the channel carrying rainwater from the catchment area to the lake. She sought directions to the authorities concerned to check the menace so as to ensure water flow into lake without any hindrance or pollution.
The court also allowed the application filed by advocate Aalok Jagga for impleading him as one of the parties in the case.
Jagga had also filed a petition in the high court earlier seeking directions to stop the construction of multi-crore Tata Camelot housing project that was proposed in the Sukhna Lake's catchment area in Kansal village of SAS Nagar.
Jagga submitted in his application that Tata housing company had been concealing vital facts from the court that vide notice dated October 31, 2011, issued by 'The Defence Services Cooperative House Building Society Ltd' at Kansal, the joint development agreement dated April 27, 2007, between both parties had been terminated.
It was also submitted that Tata and its local associate Hash Builders had been appearing before the high court since 2010 but none ever brought to the court notice the fact of termination of the agreement.The case would now come up for hearing on August 2.
