NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday sought a miracle man like former Delhi

Metro chief E Sreedharan, convinced that without an honest person with a sound technical
brain to monitor implementation of the Narendra Modi government's initiative to clean
Ganga, it could go the Yamuna way.
Thinking aloud, a bench of justices TS Thakur, AK Goel and R Banumathi said there was a
need for a supervising committee which could comprise honest officers like Sreedharan,
Bhurelal, who heads the environment protection authority (EPA), and former Election
Commission official KJ Rao.
To stir a slumbering government two decades ago, the court suo motu decided to monitor
the task of making Yamuna water potable. The SC had set three deadlines 1999, 2003 and
2005 for the authorities to ensure that the river water was able to meet the lowest potable
standards, but nothing tangible was achieved despite an outflow of Rs 1,800 crore.
Ganga has an identical story. More than 27 years ago, the court attempted monitoring the
Ganga Action Plan (GAP), which was formulated by the Centre in 1985. GAP-I and GAP-II
were initiated to control direct discharge of sewage and industrial effluents into the river
from 29 major and 23 small cities, as well as 48 towns, from Uttarakhand to West Bengal.
The CAG had taken a dim view of the clean Ganga initiative and said Rs 1,000 crore had
gone down the drain without any perceptible improvement in water quality. It pointed out
that most of the work was half-done and nearly 2,600 million litres of untreated sewage and
effluents entered the river daily.
The three-judge bench headed by Justice Thakur was keen to avoid the past repeating itself
despite repeated assurances from solicitor general Ranjit Kumar that the Modi government
was committed to clean Ganga and that it would remain answerable to the court.
The bench said statutory bodies Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and state
pollution control boards were mandated to check industrial and municipal waste entering
the river. "Had they done their job, the river would not have come to this state. You can call
in the Army when police fails. But if Army fails, who do you fall back on," it asked.
CPCB counsel Vijay Panjwani said the central board's directives to state bodies went
unheeded. Despite this, CPCB officials and scientists constantly persuaded state bodies in
the five Ganga basin states Uttarakhand, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal to
take action against polluting industries. He promised to provide details of the action taken
against polluting industries.
The solicitor general informed the court that the first task at hand was to stop industrial
effluents, responsible for 30% of the pollution in Ganga. He said the government was
committed to achieve zero liquid discharge (ZLD) from industries by March 31, 2015 by

putting the identified industries to strict notice.

Panjwani said if ZLD target was achieved, then pollution in the river would go down
drastically. However, the court wanted to know from the Centre why an important body like
CPCB remained headless for a year and was managed in an adhoc fashion by an additional
secretary in the ministry of environment and forests.
The court asked the SG to submit a phase-wise plan to achieve the goal of clean Ganga,
starting with zero pollution from industries, and also inform why CPCB was headless. It
posted the matter for further hearing on October 29.
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