Pollution panel issues ultimatum to industries polluting the Ganga

The Central Pollution Control board has set end of June as the new deadline for industries along the Ganga to install an online pollution reporting systems

Updated on: Jun 11, 2015, 17:29:01 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government has set end of June as the new deadline for industries along the Ganga to install an online pollution reporting systems, failing which they would be shut down.

The internet-based reporting systems, which would help the Central Pollution Control Board(CPCB) monitor emissions and affluent discharge, is one of the biggest initiatives taken by the Modi government to clean Ganga, considered one of the 10 most polluted rivers in the world.

The government, however, had to relax the first deadline of March 31 as the industries expressed inability to implement its directive. It has been two months and the industries have still not installed the system.

“Despite efforts by the state pollution boards to install online monitoring systems, it has not yielded desired results. Most of the industries have not been transmitting online data to the CPCB server,” CPCB chairman Shashi Shekhar has said in a strongly-worded letter to all state pollution control boards.

So far, only about 40% of the polluting industries in the Ganga river basin area, covering Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, have installed the online monitoring system. Only one-fifth of those with systems installed have started transmitting data to the central server.

According to CPCB officials, several highly-polluting industries are reluctant to install the system. “Once the system is installed, many factories may have to improve their production process to reduce the pollution load. That costs money and the industries are reluctant,” a senior CPCB official said.

The pollution watchdog is now pushing the industries hard to meet the new deadline. “No further extension of the deadline will be given and the (state) pollution boards will have no option but to withdraw the consent to operate and forfeit bank guarantee of factories that fail to comply with the orders,” Shekhar said in his letter.

The CPCB has also decided that systems being installed by the factories will be certified by a new national agency which the government proposes to set up to ensure adherence to environmental law.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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