‘AAP didn’t grant permission for translocation of trees for Rithala Phase-I sewage treatment plant’

New Delhi: Delhi L-G VK Saxena slammed the AAP government for their neglect and inaction of the upgradation/rehabilitation of Rithala Phase-I sewage treatment plant (STP) project. As per sources, the inaction of the project for the past 5 years has resulted in the discharge of a massive 37,000 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Yamuna since January 2020 till now.

Despite the project being funded under the Yamuna Action Plan-III by the Central government, the AAP government has delayed the project by not granting permission for translocation of trees that was necessary for executing the project. The files pertaining to this were pending with the Minister of Environment and Forests, GNCTD, for nearly two years.

This matter came up for discussion in the recent meeting of the high-level Committee constituted by the NGT on Yamuna Rejuvenation, wherein Saxena expressed grave displeasure and annoyance over such deliberate misconduct on part of the Delhi government. The L-G noted that nothing could be more criminal than “poisoning the Yamuna by stalling such key projects”. He has issued instructions to identify the officers responsible for this deliberate misconduct and initiate strict action against them. The L-G has set the deadline of June 2023 for ensuring 95 per cent of sewage treatment before being discharged into the Yamuna. The L-G was informed that the ongoing work on the Rithala Phase-I STP will be completed by June 2023.

The work of “Rehabilitation and Up-Gradation of Rithala Phase-I Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP)”was awarded to a private firm namely M/s. VA Tech Wabag Ltd. in June 2018 and the same was scheduled for completion in December 2021. However, the government deliberately kept sitting over two files for translocating over 500 trees for 3 years without assigning any justifiable reason. The L-G was informed that the first file for tree translocation was kept pending for 17 months, while the second file related to it was pending for 20 months. The permission was granted only after interference of the Yamuna Monitoring Committee constituted by the NGT.

As a result, the project remained stuck for complete 3 years and the upgradation/rehabilitation work could start only after July 2021, and is still pending completion. All this while, 40 MGD of untreated sewage kept getting criminally dumped by the DJB into the Yamuna, through the Supplementary and Najafgarh Drain.