NEW DELHI, October 16 — The Principal Bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Friday issued mandatory compliance directives instructing the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and five riparian State Pollution Control Boards to enforce 24x7 telemetry from Online Continuous Effluent Monitoring Systems (OCEMS) across all 2,836 Grossly Polluting Industries (GPIs) situated within the Ganga river basin.
The environmental court ordered that commercial units across tanneries, textile dyeing houses, distilleries, pulp mills, and chemical processing facilities found tampering with sensor calibrations or breaching permissible Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), and Total Suspended Solids (TSS) effluent thresholds face immediate closure under Section 33A of the Water Act alongside punitive environmental damages under the 'Polluter Pays' doctrine.
The Tribunal further mandated the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) to publish quarterly independent third-party performance audits of all municipal Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) in Kanpur, Varanasi, and Patna to eradicate point-source untreated sewage discharge entering the riverine ecosystem.
The statutory framework of the National Green Tribunal Act 2010 (jurisdiction, composition, and adherence to principles of natural justice), the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974, the regulatory functions of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), and the indicators of aquatic riverine health (BOD, Dissolved Oxygen) are high-priority topics in UPSC Civil Services (GS-III: Environmental Governance & Pollution Control).