New Delhi, Oct 30 (IANS) The Supreme Court Tuesday asked the government to place before it the Yamuna Action Plan (YAP) with details about the cleaning of the river and to prevent untreated effluents flowing into it.
An apex court bench of Justice Swatanter Kumar and Justice Madan B. Lokur also wanted to know how the 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 before it.
The court said that what had been given to it was only a part and not the minutes of the entire proceedings of the YRDA.
Justice Swatanter Kumar asked the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to set up a two-member committee to check the efficacy of the 18 sewage treatment plants operational in Delhi at present.
The court direction came with DJB telling the court that it had 18 sewage drains effluents of which were flowing into the river after being treated at 18 sewage treatment plants (STPs).
However, it admitted that because of capacity constraints of the STPs, untreated effluents too were going into the river.
The court allowed CPCB counsel Vijay Panjwani’s plea to allow inspection of the electricity bills of the 18 STPs.
He contended that because of their over or under-design, the STPs were not operating at optimal capacity.
During the last hearing, CPCB counsel Panjwani had told the court that coliform bacteria level in the Yamuna waters that should be a maximum of 5,000 MNP/100 ml was as high as 17,000,000,000 MNP.
The court had expressed its displeasure over the way things were moving in the last 18 years for cleaning Yamuna under the YAP.
The court had entertained the petition on the cleaning of the river in 1994.
