5-year monitoring of river pollution, shifts oversight to NGT

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ended its five-year monitoring of contamination of rivers due to sewage effluents through a suo motu proceeding, and directed all statutory authorities, states, and the Centre to continue filing status reports before the National Green Tribunal (NGT), where similar proceedings are already pending.

- Abraham Thomas [e-mail]

A bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant said specialised tribunals such as the NGT were created to deal with such matters. Taking exception to the January 13, 2021 order of the top court taking suo motu cognisance of the issue, the bench, also comprising justice Joymalya Bagchi, said, "It seems to us that instead of initiating suo motu proceedings, this court ought to have asked the NGT to monitor the situation till the desired results are achieved." The court referred to two past NGT orders passed in September 2020 and February 2021, in which the tribunal issued panIndia directions to all statutory authorities to address gaps in the generation and treatment of sewage and effluents discharged into rivers by setting up the requisite number of common effluent treatment plants (CETPs) and sewage treatment plants (STPs).