No water body will be filled for construction: Sovan

State environment minister and the Mayor Sovan Chatterjee on Sunday said that not a single water body in the state would be filled for the construction of buildings. While addressing a programme organized on the occasion of World Environment Day at the Paribesh Bhavan, Mr Chatterjee said that his department and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation will take stern action against those will be found to have filled a water body.

Chatterjee said that KMC has a comprehensive data about each and every water body in its jurisdiction and hence if one fills a water body in order to make way for the construction he will be caught. The concerned department in the KMC has been monitoring and keeping a vigil on the water bodies to save them from the promoters. It may be mentioned here that the KMC had laid lot of stress on the environmental issues. It had already signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the British government to make Kolkata a low carbon resilient city. The British government has agreed to share its expertise with the civic body to check the carbon level in the city.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also sent a message to the people by tweeting: “We will build a Green Earth. This is our pledge on World environment Day”. Meanwhile an organisation on Sunday celebrated the victory of Trinamool Congress by planting 211 trees in Hooghly.

Various NGOs also carried out tree plantation exercise with a theme on protesting wildlife. Indian Museum organised a workshop on clay modeling, painting with wildlife as its theme to lay stress on the preservation of the environment.

United Nations Environment Programme this year selected a theme of “Go wild for life ~ zero tolerance for illegal wildlife trade” to check the illegal trade in wild life.