Abantika Ghosh,
NEW DELHI: A high-powered committee has recommended that a Yamuna River Development Authority should be constituted along the lines of the Ganga authority that will be responsible for the entire stretch of the river from Yamunotri — where it starts from the glacier — to Allahabad where it finally meets the Ganga.
The authority will have jurisdiction over inter-state water wars and will see to the implementation of all other recommendations of the committee, including conservation of monsoon water to be released throughout the year, dredging of the river and implementation of the moratorium on construction on the riverbed. The recommendations have already been sent to the PMO. The committee had been formed in 2007, with the lieutenant-governor of Delhi as its chairman and the chief minister as vice-chairman.
The structure of the authority — details like who will head it and how many members it will comprise — have not been laid down in the recommendations. ''That has been left to the PMO, but one way of doing it could be of having one overarching head and then making the respective state chief ministers responsible for it in their states,'' said a source.
The committee has recommended a slew of measures for rejuvenating Yamuna in Delhi and the authority, initially will be responsible for their implementation. The recommendations are primarily based on the fact that a river which has no water is dead. So all of them are geared towards getting a year round reasonable amount of water flowing in the Yamuna. That itself will cleanse it a lot, but there is also a need for physical removal of pollutants.
The committee has recommended that there should be arrangements for storing the four lakh million cusecs water that are piped out every year during monsoon, to be released daily so that Yamuna does not become a drain like it is now, when it enters Delhi.
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