‘Landowning agencies must ensure prevention of encroachment of waterbodies’
Landowning agencies must ensure prevention of encroachments of waterbodies in the city & unique ID numbers should be given to them for identification, a monitoring committee has suggested to the National Green Tribunal (NGT).
The committee told the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that the waterbodies should be secured by constructing boundary walls & relevant entries in the revenue records. “The govt agencies should on priority start mapping of small waterbodies on Global Positioning System (GPS) platform, monitoring the water quality, penalising the defaulters & putting high values on these waterbodies & give proper weightage for their protection. Action shall be taken against trespassers,” the panel told the National Green Tribunal (NGT).
“The agencies shall have dedicated staff to take care of the waterbodies. Delhi Jal Board (DJB) has recently designated Rakesh Sahni as SE (Water Bodies). The monitoring committee shall ensure that there is co-ordination between different agencies,” the panel said.
The committee told the tribunal that new water bodies are being taken up for revival from time to time on the basis of information given by activists or newspaper clippings.
“The monitoring committee has visited remote areas/villages to have first-hand information.
“There is awareness among the people now & the monitoring committee is getting several requests to visit the neglected waterbodies for their revival. Our attention has been drawn recently towards water bodies at Tihar Jheel [Hari Nagar], Prasad Nagar Lake & Tuglakabad Lake,” it said.
The monitoring committee has already visited 2 of them & plans to visit the other ones shortly. Necessary steps are being taken to improve the condition of these waterbodies, it said.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) govt’s scheme of providing 20,000 litres of water each month free of cost to every household in Delhi is being misused by several housing societies, the committee also said. It said that after availing 20,000 litres free of cost, these societies start extracting groundwater. “The extraction of groundwater by using tube-wells/bore-wells is being done to avoid payment of water tariff. The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) should take steps to prevent this,” it said.
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