River, lakes conservation: Panel slams Environment Ministry

In its report tabled in Parliament today, Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests expressed its displeasure over the action taken by the Ministry on its recommendation that efforts should be intensified for bringing down pollution levels in major rivers.

"The Committee has desired the Ministry of Environment and Forests to play a more proactive role in coordination with state governments to enhance sewage treatment facilities but the Ministry somehow seems reluctant to undertake this challenge," said the panel, chaired by T Subbarami Reddy, in its report.

Dissatisfied by the Ministry's Action Taken Report, the 31-member panel, consisting of members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, said, "The business as usual buck-passing approach adopted by the Ministry, in the view of the Committee, is, to certain extent responsible for high levels of pollution in major rivers."

The committee also reiterated its recommendations to the Ministry.

The panel also pulled up the Ministry for not bothering to go carefully through its recommendation that steps should be taken to stop encroachment and illegal commercial activities in the catchment areas of all the major rivers including Ganga and Yamuna.

"It is quite disturbing to find that the Ministry has not bothered to carefully go through recommendation of the Committee which called for action on the part of the Ministry and not a nonchalant, evasive and irrelevant reply," the report said.

Taking a serious view in the matter, the panel expressed the hope that in future the Ministry would prepare Action Taken Note with the "due diligence and utmost attention".