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Indian Court bans industries polluting river

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has banned thousands of industries near the Indian capital from discharging untreated waste into the Yamuna River, newspaper reports said on Tuesday.

"The river appears to have been ruined," said Judges B.N. Kirpal and S. Rajendra Babu in their Monday ruling.

Most rivers are dangerously polluted in India because tons of sewage and industrial wastes are dumped into them every day.

The government launched a major sewage treatment project, using modern technology, to clean the Ganges in 1986. But it failed.

On Monday, the Supreme Court acted on a report by the State-run Central Pollution Control Board, which said Yamuna River water was not fit for drinking.

The permissible level of coliform bacteria from human waste is 5,000 per 100 milliliters of water, the control board said. "But the Yamuna water was found to contain 110 million coliform," in every 100 milliliters.

The ban on dumping wastes into the river applies to industries in New Delhi and neighbouring Haryana state.

The court criticised the New Delhi state government for not implementing its own earlier order that fixed last November 1 as the halting the discharge of untreated industrial wastes into the river.

The Delhi state government told the court that 963 industries had been shut down to keep them from discharging wastes, but that 252 were allowed to reopen after supplying reports about treatment of their waste.

Last year, the Supreme Court had banned the registration of all cars which did not comply with Euro-II emission norms to clean up the air in the Indian capital.

But then the court allowed registration of 1,500 cars every month that conform only to Euro-I standards. AFP