national green tribunal

As the rejuvenation of Bellandur and Varthur lakes is underway, the NGO Bangalore Environment Trust (BET) has written an open letter to the state government, requesting course correction. The expert committee on lake rejuvenation had recommended that both the lakes be desilted, but BET's letter points out that it'd take 53 years to remove the toxic silt-cum-slush in Bellandur lakebed, and 20 years for Varthur lakebed! This is because toxic waste has flown into the two lakes, unimpeded, for the last 50 years. BET's calculations are based on a recent study by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). More importantly, the…

Kolkata proposes to introduce biomining for the first time in the city to tackle its Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management challenge and Mollar Bheri in the eastern part of the city will pave the way.  A portion of land in this shallow flat-bottom waste water-fed fishery, located within the East Kolkata Wetlands, was being used by Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) as a dumping ground. It was alleged that the Bidhan Nagar Municipal Corporation, the Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority (NDITA) and New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) -- all in the greater Kolkata region -- had been disposing of waste in…

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.” This quote from Russian-American author and philosopher Ayn Rand’s bestseller, The Fountainhead, aptly describes everything that happened at Rabindra Sarovar since early morning on November 2nd well into the following day, as an order from the country’s green court -- the National Green Tribunal (NGT) – was brazenly flouted to allow the conduct of Chhat Puja in the Sarovar premises. An earlier story on Citizen Matters had detailed all the precautions and steps that had been taken to protect the national lake from toxic…

Close to 20 people killed in the city itself, several missing and over 3000 requiring rehabilitation -- Pune is grappling with the situation in the aftermath of the September flash floods, as the city and its adjoining areas saw over 100 millimetres of rain over a period of two days. While efforts are on to redeem the situation, environmentalists and analysts say that the writing had been on the wall for some time. And the authorities had even been warned about it… Flashback to August 2019 In the first week of August, Pune experienced floods after around 100000 cusecs of…

The Clean Buddha Nullah programme, which had become a symbol of the extreme apathy shown by successive governments towards citizens raising this issue for years, seems to have received a much-needed impetus. “The Buddha Nullah issue had been in a state of limbo for the past 30 years,” said Jaskirat Singh, State Executive Committee Member of the Naroa Punjab Manch (NPM), a citizen body formed to highlight issues related to water pollution. “It was around the time the Citizen Matters story appeared that we formed the Naroa Punjab Manch and since then we have been actively taking it up with…

For Vineet Gautam, the tall deodar tree in the backyard of his heritage home Mayvilla, had become a threat to his life and property. A massive landslide caused by incessant rains had washed away 80-100 metres of common road in the vicinity of his 1928-built home, dangerously tilting the massive tree. Having spent a night of anxiety and fear in his home, Vineet moved his family to a safer location the next morning, and had to spend three days to convince the municipal corporation to cut down and remove the tree. Vineet Gautam was fortunate as the civic authorities responded…

It literally took an international outcry to force the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to step in and try to find a solution to the rising mountain of waste that is East Delhi’s Ghazipur landfill. At a time when Swachh Bharat is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s focus and debates rage over climate change, the PMO has stepped in to seek help from experts to grapple with the challenge posed by the country’s tallest mountain of waste. On July 10th, it issued a 12-page Global Request for Proposal (RFP) for tackling this problem. An IIT Kanpur alumnus and  Principal Scientific Advisor to…

The months preceding the Lok Sabha election this year was a season of sops. Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled several projects and announced more. But a sit-in protest of 200-odd farmers put a spanner in the works for one such big announcement. The farmers have been protesting against land acquisition and inadequate compensation for the proposed site for Noida International Greenfield Airport project since October 2018.  The proposed airport, 70 km away from the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, New Delhi, estimated to cost Rs. 16,000 crore, was believed to be the government’s showpiece ahead of the elections. Although the state…

“The beauty of Shimla lies in its conceptualisation by the Britishers,” says Dr Ravinder Dhiman, a Shimla-based history researcher. “Primarily, it was modelled as a hill station for their summer recess. Yet most features and facilities built by them were similar to the Smart City concepts currently being drawn up. But in the existing conditions, these smart city concepts sound utterly unrealistic and highly impracticable”. Shimla is one of the 30 urban centres chosen under the Smart City Mission launched by PM Narendra Modi in 2015. The Rs 2,905 crore project, which has been approved by the centre, aims at…

On the face of it all, the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) could not care less, even though the city is union defence minister Rajnath Singh’s constituency. The cleanliness survey conducted earlier this year by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) ranked Lucknow as one of the dirtiest cities in the country. The city’s ranking dropped to 121, from 115 last year. Despite having an army of 9350 sanitation workers, 6281 of them on contract, and showing an increase in monthly petrol consumption of 1.5 lakh litres for transporting solid waste, the municipal corporation has fared poorly in…