BAREILLY: The National Green Tribunal has directed the UP government as well as district administration of Sambhal to ensure that no hand-pump or bore-well is used for extracting polluted water in the district. Sambhal district magistrate Anand Kumar Singh was also instructed to set up a water treatment plant at the earliest for providing potable water to residents. The order was issued on August 17 following media reports about extensive water contamination in at least 30 villages, where water was found to contain mercury, arsenic and heavy metals.Gaurav Bansal, counsel at NGT told TOI, "The tribunal on August 8 had directed district administration as well as the chief secretary of UP to restrict water extraction from hand-pumps which have been marked polluted by the Jal Nigam in six districts - Baghpat, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Saharanpur and Ghaziabad - of western UP. Now, a similar order has been issued for Sambhal district in which DM has been instructed to set up water treatment plant for 30 villages, where the ground water has become highly contaminated, at the earliest."The tribunal also instructed UP Jal Nigam to ensure that potable drinking water was being supplied to all villagers in the district without any further delay. The NGT bench headed by Raghuvendra S Rathore issued the order while hearing a petition filed by NGO Doaba Paryavaran Samiti (DPS).Bansal said that reports were continuously coming of people in Sambhal district suffering from dangerous and incurable diseases like hepatitis, cholera, liver damage, bone disease and neonatal deformities."Several people in 30 villagers have died over the last two years due to cancer and other diseases after drinking hand-pump water. I collected water samples from these villages for lab testing and after the report arrived, we approached the tribunal. The heavily contaminated water is not only affecting the ecosystem but is also impacting the overall health of the people," he said. The petition was filed on May 29, 2017 with the tribunal.Earlier, the court had passed several orders including setting up a committee to test ground water in 30 villages of the district for heavy metals, sealing hand-pumps spewing contaminated water and making provision for potable water for villagers, but the ground reality hasn't changed and people residing there continue to suffer.

Stay updated with all the Bareilly Lates News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.