B'luru toxic flow polluting Thenpennai: Centre

THE central government has confirmed that Thenpennai river, flowing from Karnataka into Tamil Nadu, is severely polluted due to unchecked discharge of industrial effluents and untreated sewage from Bengaluru's sprawling urban and industrial zones.

- SV KRISHNA CHAITANYA @ Chennai

In a written reply to a question from DMK MP T.R. Baalu in the Lok Sabha on Monday, Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Kirti Vardhan Singh admitted the downstream stretches of rivers like the Thenpennai are heavily contaminated. The ministry's statement corroborated findings by Tamil Nadu authorities and national monitoring agencies that identified the river at Chokkarasanaapalli Bridge in Karnataka—near Tamil Nadu border—as a Priority-I polluted river stretch, the most critical category under national classification.