Unique IDs should be allotted to water bodies: directs NGT

NEW DELHI: A monitoring committee suggested the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that agencies owning land must ensure prevention of encroachments of water bodies in the city and must be given unique ID numbers to them for identification.

The committee said that the water bodies should be secured by constructing boundary walls and relevant entries in the revenue records. The committee further suggested the green panel that the government agencies should start mapping of small water bodies on GPS platform on a priority basis, monitoring the water quality, penalising the defaulters and putting high values on these water bodies and pay proper attention for their protection. “The agencies shall have dedicated staff to take care of the water bodies. DJB has recently designated Rakesh Sahni as SE (Water Bodies). The monitoring committee shall ensure that there is co-ordination between different agencies,” added the committee.

To fetch the first-hand information, the monitoring committee visited remote areas. The NGT panel said that “There is awareness among the people now and the monitoring committee is getting several requests to visit the neglected water bodies for their revival. Recently, our attention was drawn towards water bodies at Tihar Jheel [Hari Nagar], Prasad Nagar Lake and Tuglakabad Lake”.

The tribunal informed that the monitoring committee has already visited a few of these water bodies and the ones left will be visited shortly. Steps necessary for revival of these bodies are being taken to improve the condition.

The monitoring committee brought in light that the Delhi government’s scheme of providing 20,000 litres of water free of cost for a month each to every household in Delhi is being misused by several housing societies. The committee complained that post collection of 20,000 litres of water, the societies start extracting groundwater using tube-wells and bore-wells. to avoid payment of water tariff, and said that the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) should to take necessary steps to prevent this.