The Gujarat High Court on Monday issued notices to the State Government and Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) on a PIL seeking immediate action to clean up four of the State rivers which it claims are polluted with sewage water and other bio-hazards.
A division bench of Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J. B. Pardiwala has also asked the municipal authorities of Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Vadodara and Surat to file their replies and fixed the next hearing in the first week of June.
Petitioner Prakash Kapadia, president of a NGO ‘Jagega Gujarat Sangharsh Samiti’, had raised the issue of pollution in the four major rivers of the State — Sabarmati in Ahmedabad, Vishwamitri (Vadodara), Tapi (Surat) and Aji (Rajkot) — in a PIL filed through advocate R. C. Jani.
The petitioner has claimed that “all four rivers are found joined with the sewage containing organic decomposed material and zero level of oxygen and are also flooded with faecal micro-organics and bio-hazards.”