Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Nizamuddin West Association Vs Union of India & Others dated 16/04/2025. The matter related to desilting of 24 drains with special focus on two drains - Kushak drain and Sunheri Pul drain before the monsoon. The court was informed that …
THE National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is barely three months old on the ground. This is precisely why the mass social audit of the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) in Dungarpur district in southern Rajasthan in April held enormous implications for the way this ambitious piece of legislation could take …
on april15, people living near Roopsagar lake in Udaipur were shocked to see bulldozers ripping apart its dry bed. "When I asked the contractor, I was told a 80-feet (about 24 metres) wide road was to be carved out in the peta (bed) of the lake,' says Ramlal Vaishnav, ex-councillor …
The erstwhile rulers of Udaipur developed an interconnected chain of artificial lakes, diverting the overflow of one lake to another. They also made strict rules and regulations to keep these lakes clean and healthy. Udaipur came to be known as the city of lakes. "No construction was allowed in the …
In 1992, a viral epidemic spread through the Jheelo ki Basti of Udaipur district in Rajasthan. Healthcare facilities were limited and many children died. The scourge was finally contained only with the help of traditional healers in the area, whose kada (potion) quickly brought a frightening situation under control. The …
Rajsamand, 194.6 thousand tonnes per year. Water pollution the slurry causes is a lesser nuisance. The bigger one is air pollution. The slurry contains the following chemicals: loss on ignition (volatile matter from mineral heated to 1000
I once saw a miracle. It was near a ragged wall of broken rocks near Udaipur. One side of the wall had patches of yellowing grass, not taller than an inch, with the occasional dry stalk. The other side, protected from goats by the wall, was a sea of green …
The people of Bichhri , a village in Udaipur district of Rajasthan, have taken on themselves the challenging task of restoring their contaminated land and water. Fed up of the government's inability to do the same, the Jan Jagaran Vikas Samiti, a representative body of the villagers is all set …
1982: Balwant Singh Mehta, an Udaipur citizen who turns 101 this year, approaches the Rajasthan High Court to intervene and save the dying lakes of Udaipur 1992: The Jheel Sanrakshan Samiti (JSS) is formed and starts a campaign to save the lakes 1994: The court, responding to Mehta's petition, directs …
the struggle against the British which finally ended in Independence plunged the villagers of Seed, Rajasthan, into troubled times. After over two decades of helpless suffering, it took a Gandhian from the neighbouring village of Sethwana to dispel the clouds of despondency. The simple step involved converting Seed to a …
ON FEBRUARY 10 this year, Machu Dandavate, the deputy chairperson of the planning commission, underlined the reason behind a phenomenon which has lately taken the country by stem. Judicial activism - the intervention of the judiciary to stem the rot, especially in the field of environment and its protection - …
AN INDUSTRIAL estate in Andhra Pradesh's (AP) Medak district, Patancheru lies just off the Hyderabad-Pune highway. Save the electricity lines that snake across the undulating landscape and the unhurried public transport, the region seems untouched by the 20th century. But an insidious by-product of industrialisation has wreaked havoc on the …
THE ridge in Delhi (the capital's 'lungs') has been mired in controversy for the past two decades for its rampant abuse. This rump of the Aravalli hills, a discontinued sparse forest of kikar, babul, shisham, neem and eucalyptus, has always absorbed pressure from a metro that is bursting at its …
THE September of 1995 left its mark on the Kullu-Manali valley in Himachal Pradesh (HP) in more ways than one, While unprecedented rains and an angry Beas river caused widespread havoc in the hills, the aftermath was marked by the exposure of a tale of alleged corruption and nepotism. On …
WHILE the courts have played their role by increasing awareness against environmental degradation and ensuring that executive agencies respect the environmental laws of the land, the results have left more questions unanswered. In Bichhri, for example, the Courts had an opportunity to penalise the polluters with exemplary Cities and resolve …
On April 16,1996, a division bench of the Supreme Court (SC) comprising Justices Kuldip Singh and S Saghir Ahmed directed the chief justice of the Calcutta High Court to constitute a special division bench to hear environment-related petitions - and the nation's first green bench was born. The SC has …
Whether the SC passed the correct executive orders • The mum are not equipped to deal with environmental issues. They do not have the expertise, the material on the basis of which they can judge the effects of what are alleged to environmentally disastrous activities. - P N BHAGWATI • …
February 13, 1996: SC orders the closure of five chemical units producing H-acid, a chemical whose production processes have been banned in the West in Bichhri, Rajasthan. April 18, 1996: Setting aside a Central notification which had permitted development activity within 200 metres (m) of a beach, the SC bans …
• Greening of the ridge with indigenous species has not started. • Many vacated parts of central ridge are being used as garbage dumps. • Parks covering 310 ha of the notified Delhi ridge area have not been given forest character. • Chandraswami's temple in Sanjay Van has started encroaching …
Bichhri: where the earth bleeds People's protests had forced the closure of Bichhri's polluting industries. The court's intervention, which was late in coming, has not helped much, Bichhri remains the same IN BICHHRI, a nondescript village near Udaipur in Rajasthan, tile wells contain, instead of clear water, a brownish cocktail …
