The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has taken a suo motu cognisance of a report published in The Hindu highlighting that the demarcation of the Yamuna floodplains in Delhi— a basic step to help identify and protect its sensitive ecosystem from encroachment— is incomplete nine years after it ordered the authorities to do it.
The next hearing over the issue has been fixed for August 7.
The report had mentioned that while the Delhi government had claimed in its submissions to the NGT that “100% physical demarcation of a major stretch of the floodplains city has been done”, visits to the sites in question and interviews with officials have confirmed that major gaps persist.
“The news item indicates the violation of the Water Prevention and Control of Pollution Act, 1974 and the Environment Protection Act, 1986. The news item raises substantial issues relating to compliance of the environmental norms and the implementation of the provisions of scheduled enactment,” the NGT’s Principal Bench headed by chairperson Prakash Shrivastava, judicial member Arun Kumar Tyagi and expert member A. Senthil Vel said in an observation, dated May 21.
The tribunal said the news item further states that nine years after the NGT ordered the identification of encroachments on the floodplains, the process was not initiated even after the devastating 2023 floods.
“The article states as per the latest satellite images, illegal permanent constructions have only increased since the NGT’s landmark judgment in 2015,” it said.
After the July 2023 floods, experts had opined that permanent constructions on the floodplains were one of the main reasons for the intensity of the floods, though there was heavy rainfall upstream of Delhi. Encroachments destroy the water-holding capacity of floodplains and also constrict the area of flow of the river.
The report was part of a five-part series published by The Hindu on different aspects of what plagues the floodplains and why Delhi continues to witness floods.
The series published in April had highlighted that nine months after Delhi witnessed the worst flood in its history— which forced over 25,000 people living on the banks of the Yamuna to shift to relief camps— nothing much has changed on the ground.