The possibility of shifting the tanneries located on the banks of river Ganga at Kanpur to some other place is almost "next to impossible" due to lack of land, the Uttar Pradesh government told the National Green Tribunal today.
Uttar Pradesh Advocate General Vijay Bahadur Singh told a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar that he discussed the issue of tanneries with senior-most officials and came to the conclusion that there is no land available with the state government to shift them.
"In 1902, Britishers commenced their first tannery unit in Kanpur. 114 years have rolled on since then. Almost three lakh people depend on this business which is spread over 3,000 acres of land in Jajmau. The possibility of shifting these units to Banthar leather park at Unnao is almost next to impossible as only 25 per cent of them can be accommodated at this site," Singh told the bench, also comprising Justice U D Salvi.
"Besides there are so many problems in land acquisition and multiple litigations start in the process. Also, the whole process of shifting will take at least four to five years. So, the only possibility is to improve the existing mechanism of tanneries at Jajmau," he said.
The top law officer of the Akhilesh Yadav government also told the green panel that the only feasible solution is to lay three different pipelines - one for chromium, second for domestic sewage and third for industrial waste - which would finally reach the common effluent treatment plant.
The idea of laying three different pipelines was agreed to by Ministry of Water Resources, Central Pollution Control Board, IIT consortium and the tanneries as well.
When the bench asked Singh about the role of the UP government in terms of providing financial assistance to the Ganga cleaning programme, he said the Centre's "Namami Gange" programme had sufficient funds for carrying out its projects.
"We are ready to cooperate with the Union government in all capacity except the finance part," he said.
The tribunal then directed him to submit by tomorrow details about the quality and quantity of effluents being discharged by leather industries in Ganga.
The hearing remained inconclusive and will continue tomorrow.
On the last date of hearing, a consortium of seven IITs told the tribunal that multiplicity of authorities, lack of assistance from state governments and dearth of monitoring has led to the failure of cleaning Ganga.
The NGT had earlier slammed the Uttar Pradesh government over the issue of shifting of tanneries located on the banks of Ganga in Kanpur to some other place to stop discharge of effluents, saying, "it can't behave like a king".
On November 15, the tribunal had stopped the government from spending "a single penny" for Ganga rejuvenation work between Haridwar and Unnao, saying a whopping Rs 20,000 crore was being spent on the entire national project by officials who did not even know about the river.
The green panel has divided the work of cleaning the river in different segments.
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