Supreme Court asks Maharashtra to shell out Rs 100 crore to clean Ulhas, Waldhuni rivers

The state’s chief secretary Sumeet Mullick said Rs50 crore will be paid by December, the balance in January

The Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday directed the Maharashtra government to release Rs100 crore to restore the polluted Ulhas and Waldhuni rivers. The rivers are a source of water for cities in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

Ulhas is among the list of 49 rivers from Maharashtra that figure among the 315 most polluted in the country, a study by the Central Pollution Control Board had reported.

The state’s chief secretary Sumeet Mullick said Rs50 crore will be paid by December, the balance in January. The money will be used to set up a sewage network and effluent treatment plants to treat domestic and industrial waste before it is discharged into the river.

The SC’s order is in response to a Special Leave Petition (SLP) by environment group Vanashakti, which had filed an application in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2012 asking for the shut down of industries discharging untreated effluents into Ulhas. In July 2015, the NGT had asked the municipal bodies of Ulhasnnagar, Kalyan Dombivli, Ambernath and Badlapur to pay Rs96 crore to restore the rivers polluted by untreated sewage and industrial wastes from the cities. The state government filed an appeal in the Bombay high court against the NGT order, following which Vanshakti filed the SLP in 2016.

HT had reported on October 6 that the SC bench of justice Madan B Lokur and justice Deepak Gupta directed the state chief secretary and municipal commissioners from the cities to be present for Tuesday’s hearing. Ulhas is among the list of 49 rivers from Maharashtra that figure among the 315 most polluted in the country, a study by the Central Pollution Control Board had reported. The study said around 3,000 million litres of untreated sewage and industrial effluents are discharged into Maharashtra’s rivers, lakes and other water bodies.