Fouled waters: On Rajasthan’s river pollution

The Supreme Court has pulled up, once again, the Rajasthan government over industrial effluents flowing into the Jojari river and the deadly risk it poses for the people depending on it. The problem is decades old — public interest litigation in the Rajasthan High Court alerted State machinery to the problem in 2011 — indicating an oversight by the State bordering on the systematic.

The Jojari, the Luni, and the Bandi are seasonal rivers in the State’s arid western region, flowing through Jodhpur, Balotra, and Pali districts. This region has also evolved as a textile-dyeing and steelworking hub, and untreated or insufficiently treated effluents from these factories have run directly into the rivers and soil, endangering the health of around 20 lakh local residents.

The region also suffers rampant illegal sand mining in riverbeds. The sewage treatment plants have been able to accommodate only around half of the sewage generated in the three urban centres, according to the State’s submissions to the Court in 2025, even as the Court recorded substantial underutilisation at common effluent treatment plants.

The combination is suggestive of industrial sources bypassing treatment facilities, poor connections between the sources and the facilities, and/or insufficient capacity at particular sites or in specific periods. The Court initiated a suo motu writ petition in 2025 and constituted a High-level Ecosystem Oversight Committee chaired by Justice Sangeet Lodha to audit the plants and draft a plan to restore the rivers.

Based on the committee’s scathing status reports, Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta banned construction within 100 metres of the rivers’ edges and hazardous industries within 500 m of the present path, or of the flood lines where available.

The Court has also upbraided local authorities for failing to enforce pollution norms by citing the Court’s own stay of a 2022 National Green Tribunal order imposing a compensation on the Rajasthan State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation and the local administration in Jodhpur and Barmer.

The State regulatory apparatus has been dysfunctional: officials were aware of illegal mining operations in some areas, yet they regularised leases in those areas. Given the dereliction in play, the Court is correct to treat the possibility of collusion between State officials and industrial mafias seriously.

Justice Mehta’s observation that the State could be held liable under the ‘polluter pays’ principle is also a significant indictment of state failure, through negligence. Now, importantly, the State still has to restore the Jojari and attend to its wellbeing, which is relevant to a recent tendency by the Court to substitute itself for regulators rather than disciplining them into discharging their functions.

This needs to change.