Waging a 'free' legal battle to save the River Ganga

An Allahabad lawyer has taken up cudgels on behalf of the Ganga and his pleadings in the court may have helped in the fight for river’s existence as well as from getting further polluted.

Arun Kumar Gupta has argued effectively before the Allahabad High Court and convincing men in black robes to pass dozens of orders and many of them quashing the decisions of the Uttar Pradesh government. Some of the decisions would have further polluted
the river.

Gupta’s pleadings also saw the court directing the state government to set up sewage treatment plants at Allahabad, Varanasi and Kanpur. It was a significant order keeping in view that around 90 per cent pollution in the Ganga is caused solely by the flow of sewage.

“Approximately 287 million litres of sewage flow into the Ganga in Allahabad only… 400 million litres of sewage fall in the river in Kanpur and 300 million litres go into it in Varanasi’’, he says.

He said the tanneries of Kanpur have been responsible for roughly seven per cent pollution in the river. “I have filed a petition in the court seeking shifting of tanneries but the state government has said it may cause huge problems…. there are around 1,900 registered and unregistered tanneries in Kanpur, whose waste is directly let into the Ganga making its water toxic and unfit for even bathing’’, he said.

The high court has sought a report as to whether the tanneries could be shifted. “The matter is pending in the court’’, Gupta said.

Another important order that would go a long way in protecting the holy river from the onslaught of the ‘unplanned development’ was the direction barring any construction within a distance of 500  m from the highest flood level of the river.

“The highest flood level of the Ganga was at 90 m recorded in 1978,’’ he added.
Gupta raised an interesting question before the court during the hearing of the case. He sought to know if Ganga had a boundary just like the forests or a village. “Nowhere has the boundary of the Ganga been defined,’’ he pointed out.

In yet another case, Gupta sought to bar the authorities from drawing excess water from the river and thereby reducing its stream to a trickle especially during the summers. “How much water can be drawn from a river,’’ he posed the question before the court. The court, agreeing with his contention, ordered that the drawal must not be over 50 per cent.

The most significant victory, according to Gupta, was the high court order to the UP government not to proceed with the ambitious 1000-km long eight-lane Ganga Expressway Project connecting the western and eastern boundaries of the state after environmental concerns.

“A few months back, the high court passed an order directing the UP government to obtain a clearance from the state-level Environment Impact Assessment Authority before proceeding further with the project,’’ Gupta said.

“The court also quashed the earlier clearance granted by the Environmental Protection Authority,’’ Gupta told Deccan Herald from Allahabad.

During the hearing of the case, Gupta pointed out the dangers posed by the project to the river. “All the cities, barri­ng Varanasi, are situated on the right bank of the Ganga and any construction on its left bank will only add to the pollution in the river,’’ he submitted before the court.

“The project envisaged setting up of 32 new cities and eight new special economic zones… it would have resulted in felling of 10 lakh green trees and affected one crore farmers besides swallowing 64,000 hectares of fertile land,’’ he said.

Gupta, a successful lawyer, does not charge a single penny for fighting cases for Ganga. ``I consider it my sacred duty to protect the river’’, he says.
Incidentally, he comes from a city (Mirzapur), near Allahabad, which is situated on the bank of Ganga.
“I spent my childhood playing along the bank of the river’’, Gupta said
recalling that once he was slapped by
his grandmother after he had spit in the
river.
Gupta gives due credit to the court for taking note of the condition of the river. “The judges have adopted a tough attitude to the violations of the environmental regulations’’, he said.

According to Gupta, the government is the ‘biggest culprit’. He recalled a decis­ion of the government to grant permission to a private builder for a housing project on the bank of the Ganga. “The authorities had earlier refused permission to another builder citing environmental concerns but gave permission to some one else later’’, he said.

Gupta may not be able to save the river but his efforts would certainly go a long way in at least delaying what looks like the inevitable given the current state of affairs.