Court refuses to lift Chhath Puja celebration ban in Yamuna: Devotees may fall sick

The petitioner's counsel said the ghats and the river Yamuna should be cleaned for Chhath Puja, but the Delhi High Court said this could not be done overnight as it was a challenging exercise.

In Short

• Delhi High Court says impossible to get Yamuna cleaned overnight
• Delhi government tells court that 1,000 spots are earmarked for Chhath Puja celebrations
• Toxic froth due to untreated sewage flowing on Yamuna's surface for past few days

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday refused to lift the ban on Chhath Puja celebrations in the Yamuna, citing the river's high pollution levels and said it would be harmful to devotees. The court also said that sufficient arrangements were already made for devotees.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela rejected a plea filed by Purvanchal Nav Nirman Sansthan, which sought directions to permit people to perform Chhath Puja on the Yamuna riverbed.

The counsel for the petitioner said that the ghats and the river should be cleaned for the festival, but the court said this could not be done overnight as it was a challenging exercise.

"If you want to get involved in the cleaning up process, work over there. The problem is, we cannot be discharging sewage into the Yamuna. We are today discharging sewage into the Yamuna. Look at the unauthorised colonies built on the banks and the untreated sewage," the court said.

"Today, our mindset needs to be clean. The problem is, in our mind, that the Yamuna is uncleaned. We are not cleaning our minds. If you can clean that, then you can clean Yamuna very quickly," it added.

The lawyer for the Delhi government said that devotees could fall sick if they were allowed to perform Chhath Puja in the highly-polluted river.

The High Court was also told that the Delhi government had earmarked 1,000 spots to perform the Chhath Puja in Delhi.

After hearing the arguments, the bench said it could do anything at the eleventh hour and dismissed the plea.

This year, Chhath Puja will be celebrated on Thursday. The Delhi government has declared a holiday for the festival, celebrated largely by migrants from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Every year, devotees take a dip in the Yamuna despite a thick layer of toxic foam covering the river's surface and offer prayers by facing the Sun's direction.

The toxic froth in the Yamuna is primarily due to high levels of pollutants and the presence of phosphates and surfactants in the untreated sewage entering the river.

As winter approaches, Delhi faces a double whammy of bad air quality levels and toxic foam in the Yamuna every year, drawing a war-of-words between the ruling AAP government and BJP.