-The Times of India LUCKNOW: Even as people go ballistic over news of meat shops being closed down across UP, what the government is doing is simply enforcing rules regarding slaughter and transport of animals. These rules were hardly wielded by municipal corporations so far. Under the Uttar Pradesh Municipal Corporation Act, 1959, it is a mandatory service of local bodies to provide fresh and hygienic meat to people while ensuring construction...

-PTI New Delhi: “Not a single drop of river Ganga has been cleaned so far,” the National Green Tribunal on Monday observed, rapping the government agencies for “only wasting public money” in the name of the cleaning project. The tribunal asked the government agencies about how they were executing the Prime Minister’s ambitious ‘Namami Gange project’ and said it does not want the “drama” regarding complaints between the Centre and Uttar Pradesh...

-The Indian Express A report on air quality, released during the conference, said Varanasi and Allahabad have not seen a single ‘good’ air quality day in the past one year. Varanasi: Burning agricultural residue doesn’t just bring down air quality, but also leads to longer spells of dense fog, scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur have concluded. While the concentration of oxidised organic carbon that is produced after burning biomass —...

-Hindustan Times Sukhwant Singh, a farmer in Haryana’s Kurukshetra, had most of his 12 acres of agricultural land under paddy. After harvesting his crop, he set the paddy stubble on fire, burning it to the ground within a few hours. Singh and most other paddy growers in Punjab and Haryana, who are facing financial constraints due to falling productivity and dwindling returns, do not care about the ban on stubble burning put...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: An environmental panel set up by the Supreme Court today launched an app through which people in Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh can alert city officials about garbage fire, construction dust and other sources of air pollution. People can upload images of pollution on the app, named Hawa Badlo (change the air), so that officials in charge of specific geographical locations can take action. The app was launched...