Taking time off from his routine responsibilities, Jharkhand Food Minister Saryu Roy has been working to save water bodies from pollution, which he claims is "main reason for diseases" in the mineral-rich state.
"When I embarked on the 'Clean Water Sources Campaign' ten years ago, some people used to mock me. Had they taken the campaign seriously, the situation now would not have been alarming," said the minister in the BJP's Raghubar Das government.
"If we continue to take things lightly then it will be disastrous in the next five years," he warned and said even now some industries "are disregarding" Union Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goya's directive to submit reports as to what steps they had taken to prevent effluent discharge into rivers and water bodies.
"On May 12 this year, Goyal held a meeting with officials of the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), the Central Coalfields Limited and of other departments concerned and issued directives that they should give a report within three months, ensuring zero discharge in the rivers flowing in their areas," Roy said.
"Of them, only the DVC submitted a report about a week ago," he claimed.
Roy said he had campaigned for 'Damodar Bachao Andolan' and also worked on the Swarnarekha, Sone and other rivers and two PILs were filed with the Jharkhand High Court related to effluent flow into rivers in the last ten years.
He said the idea behind the campaign was to prevent industrial effluence into rivers.
He said that development works should also ensure protection of rivers and water bodies.
Roy has now made 'Yugantar Bharati', an NGO, the nodal organisation for all other NGOs and volunteer groups to take the campaign forward and cover all the 24 districts of Jharkhand.
