Get ready to be punished if you dare to mess with river Ganga the living entity. A Centre-appointed panel has drafted a bill, the National River Ganga Bill 2017, if passed into law, it will prescribe seven years in jail and a fine up to Rs.100 Crore for anyone who dares to pollute the river.
The offence includes blocking its flow, quarrying its banking or constructing jetties without permission, crushing, cutting, finishing or processing sand mining illegally in bed/on banks of Ganga/its tributaries: Simple imprisonment up to five years or with fine which may extend up to Rs 50,000 or both.
The Uttarakhand High Court recently declared the river a “living entity,” and the panel’s bill makes it emphatically clear that troubling it can be a costly affair if converted into the country’s first ever act on a river.
The panel led by retired Justice Giridhar Malaviya has also suggested declaring an area abutting within 1 kilometre from Ganga and its major tributaries as a “water saving zone”.
Advocate Arun Kumar Gupta, one of the four members of the experts’ committee currently studying the draft bill, pitched for making stringent provisions to ensure people did not violate the law which aims to make the river pollution-free.
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