Take Note, Soon Polluting Ganga Could Land You In Troubled Waters!

Destinations

Keeping the holy river Ganga clean has been a long-drawn battle in the country. Many have put in efforts to ensure the river stays pollution free but in vain. Hopefully, now, things will shape up differently as a new law is soon going to be furnished to prevent polluting Ganga.
By Kumar Shree

Ganga, one of the most sacred rivers in India, spans across 2,510 km. Cleaning a river of such scale is a gargantuan task, and the efforts of doing so have been under process since the 1980s. First, the Ganga Action Plans and then the mammoth Namami Gange campaign has been in effect to clear one of the world’s most polluted rivers of its woes.

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A post shared by Bhavesh (@bhavesh_yuj) on Aug 21, 2020 at 12:08am PDT

However, all this collective effort have not been able to produce the desired results, as even after so many years, the holy Ganga is still dealing with sewage and industrial discharge spilt into it daily. Multiple authorities are working on a draft of the proposed law for cleaning the pollution in Ganga and making it crystal-clear again. This draft, once in satisfactory shape, will be sent for the Cabinet’s approval.

The proposed law, once in effect, will set certain legal obligations related to pollution prevention. It will also set biological and effluent parameters that must be maintained at some marked geographical areas through which the holy river flows. As of now, these marked areas are Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.

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A post shared by Saptarshi Sinha (@ersapsinha) on Aug 20, 2020 at 5:45pm PDT

The proposed law will also have an approach to make polluters pay. Till now many illegal factories have been closed and more will meet the same fate if they fail to treat their sewage waste before discharging it into the river. Many others will also be banned from discharging any form of sewage into Ganga. The idea is to prevent any untreated municipal sewage or industrial runoff from entering the river.

While the ongoing Namami Gange campaign has taken multiple measures to prevent further polluting of the river, this new law will surely be a big step in the right direction.