NEW DELHI: Declaring that the government would be extremely strict with those who pollute the Ganga or Yamuna, Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari said that he had directed that a notice be issued to Haryana its role in polluting the Yamuna.
“We are very serious about this…I’d told the water resources secretary to send a notice to the Haryana chief secretary,” he said at a public function on Wednesday.
While cleaning the Ganga was a key priority of the government, pollution in the river couldn’t be addressed unless pollution in the Yamuna was addressed too, he said, adding that 14 projects had been planned to stop pollution in the Yamuna.
These included 10 in Delhi, two in Uttar Pradesh, and two in Haryana – at Sonipat and Panipat. In addition, 20 new towns on Yamuna and its tributaries (Hindon and Kali) had been identified for pollution abatement. Eight of these towns were on the Yamuna (Kalpi, Loni, Auriya, Kairana, Etawa, Bagpat, Tundla and Firozabad), four on Hindon (Saharanpur, Muazaffarnagar, Khora and Muradnagar) and six on the Kali river (Meerut, Hapur, Deoband, Modinagar, Budhana and Autrauli). He said that six sewerage-management projects in Delhi had already been awarded and two are under tendering for Yamuna.
He said his larger plan for the Yamuna included creating a massive garden along a 35-km stretch of the river that could go a long way in cleaning the air as well as being developed a tourist hotspot “on the lines of similar gardens in Singapore.
Haryana and Delhi have long argued over the relative role of each state in polluting the Yamuna.