New Delhi: 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, Indian Today reported.
“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.
