Karnataka polls
BJP chief Amit Shah met religious gurus and visited several mutts in Karnataka on Monday. His Congress counterpart Rahul Gandhi, too, has addressed several public meetings. His temple visits have been mocked by the BJP as a desperate attempt to win Hindu votes.
A win for the Congress would come as a huge boost not just for the party but also Gandhi, who took over as the party chief in December and has been aggressively taking on the Modi government in public as well as social media.
Karnataka is important to the BJP not only because it will take to 21 the number of states where the party is in power, on its own or with allies, but also because it will be its gateway to South, which is vital to its poll calculations for the Lok Sabha election.
The Siddaramaiah government’s move to give minority religion status to the influential Lingayat community, considered a part of Hindu fold, is seen as an attempt to dent BJP’s vote base.
Variously described as an astute political move and sheer opportunism, the decision, sent for approval to the Centre, will be a major talking point in the run-up to the poll.
The Janata Dal (Secular) led by former prime minister HD Deve Gowda is the third player in the fray. the stations recorded unsatisfactory water quality, with no station reporting satisfactory water quality.
“There is an index for air quality, but it is more difficult to develop an index for water,” a CPCB official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. “It is different from an environmental point of view and from a human health perspective. Fecal coliform is dangerous to human health.”
Anil Kumar Singh, an official at the UP Pollution Control Board, said that the high levels of pollution were due to discharge of untreated domestic waste. “Treatment capacity [in Varanasi] is about a quarter of the total discharge,” he said.
This is true of the entire Ganga main stem. Sewage treatment capacity in the 97 major towns on the river is less than half of the total sewage generated.
The largescale diversion of water has worsened as depleting water flow raises the concentration of pollutants. The Namami Gange programme, launched in May 2015, earmarked ₹20,000 crore for the rejuvenation of the river. Though ₹19, 630 crore has been approved for funding 192 projects, only 49 projects have been completed so far.
Pollution levels fluctuate, with higher water flow during and after monsoon diluting contaminant levels. “However, pollution has reached such levels that rivers like the Yamuna are polluted throughout the year,” the CPCB official said.
The data from programmes for cleaning the Ganga are incomplete and not independently verified. “The data is questionable, but since no one else apart from the pollution control boards collect the data, no one can challenge it,” said RK Sinha, an environment activist hailing from Bihar who has worked on Ganga water quality for over three decades. “The regulatory authority and monitoring authority cannot be the same.”