Ghaziabad: Puja leftovers clutter Hindon banks

Environmentalists said that the issue has been witnessed year after year and the enforcement agencies have failed to rein in erring persons

The banks of Hindon near GT Road in Ghaziabad on Saturday were strewn with rotten flowers and polythene bags, among other items, after the festivities of Dussehra and Durga Puja, as a number of devotees dumped the puja leftovers in the river.

The banks of Hindon from GT Road to the Vasundhara underpass were strewn with garbage on Saturday. (Sakib Ali/HT)

An HT team, which visited the site on Saturday, found that the banks of the river from GT Road to the Vasundhara underpass were stuffed with garbage.

HT tried reaching out to the municipal commissioner, additional municipal commissioner and the city health officer, but none responded till late Saturday evening.

However, Utsav Sharma, regional officer of UP Pollution Control Board, said, “We have noted the issue and will ask the Ghaziabad municipal corporation officials to rope in cleaning staff and get the garbage cleared from the banks of the river.”

When asked, police officials said that the immersion of the Durga idols was done in temporary ponds created away from the banks of the river.

“However, some devotees might have dumped the puja leftovers along the banks at different times. We will keep a close watch over such persons and legal action will be taken,” said Gyanendra Kumar Singh, superintendent of police (city 2).

Environmentalists said that the issue has been witnessed year after year and the enforcement agencies have failed to rein in erring persons.

“My colleague Krishan Pal from Baghpat filed a petition with the National Green Tribunal in 2015 and the tribunal directed that there should be no dumping along the banks of river. It also directed for a penalty of ₹20,000. Despite directions, there has been no let off in such instances and almost every year after festivals, there are dumps of garbage which can be seen along the banks,” said Vikrant Sharma, a city-based environmentalist.

“The enforcement agencies have basically failed despite several orders passed by the tribunal in this context. They simply dug up artificial ponds for immersion purposes, but they fail to catch erring persons,” said Akash Vashishtha, another city-based environmentalist.

The Hindon originates from Saharanpur and culminates at Momnathal in GB Nagar.

According to official statistics of the UPPCB, the upstream areas of Hindon at Maheshpur in Saharanpur, Budhana and Baghpat Road in Meerut, had no presence of dissolved oxygen (DO) from January to August this year.

Further downstream, the DO is found only at three sampling locations of Karhera, Mohan Nagar and Chijarsi bridge but the levels range between 0.8 to 2.78 mg/litres which is low for survival of aquatic life and standard of 5 mg/litre which is considered favourable for propagation of aquatic life.

“Garbage material has organic and inorganic compounds which deteriorates the DO levels and further increases the Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD). These two parameters when increased, leads to impurities in water and increase pollution levels,” said Dr Chandra Vir Singh, a retired scientist from Haryana pollution board.

Singh, the convener of Doaba Paryvaran Samiti, in 2014 and 2015 filed two petitions with the National Green Tribunal and raised the issue of contamination of water of river Hindon due to effluent discharge by industrial units and also about the contamination of groundwater in catchment areas.