-The Indian Express Despite the tall claims of the UP government of providing pollution-free water at Sangam, Allahabad, devotees at Kumbh continue to take their holy dip in polluted water. The latest report of UP Pollution Control Board (UPPCB), the Bio-chemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) at Sangam is around 5 mg/litre, much above the permissible limit of 3 mg/ltr. BOD is an indication of the organic quality of water and increases with...

-IANS The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the central government to place before it the Yamuna River Action Plan with details to prevent the untreated effluents flowing into it. The apex court bench headed by Justice Swatanter Kumar also wanted to know how Rs 12,000 crore, spent by all the stakeholders for cleaning the river, was used. The court also directed that the minutes of the Yamuna River Development Authority (YRDA) be placed...

-The Tribune India is governed by a written Constitution and any policy decision, programme by the Central or state government must be within the constitutional parameter of the Constitution. The State under our Constitution is mandated to protect the human rights. Any government policy, which seeks to shift this responsibility from the state to the private sector, would be, without anything more, unconstitutional and hence impermissible. The United Nations, since its inception, has...

A survey of 71 cities across the country conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has shown that officially 82 per cent of all the water that municipalities of these cities supply comes from surface water resources, and the rest comes from groundwater resources. But of these 71 cities, 11 depend almost completely on groundwater for public water supply. In the remaining, agencies supply water from surface sources by...

-The Indian Express Warning that time was running out to preserve the Ganga, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today pulled up state governments for a tardy performance on sewage treatment and asked them to take action against industries polluting the river. Voicing concern over the discharge of 2,900 million litres of sewage in the Ganga every day, Singh asked state governments to send proposals for new sewage treatment plants and said adequate funding...