Ludhiana: Punjab’s fresh police action against environmental degradation started on Sunday with 11 first-information reports (FIRs) about dumping dairy waste into the Buddha Dariya.The legal action follows complaints from Ludhiana’s municipal and urban wastewater management officials who inspected dairy complexes near Humbran and Tajpur Road and reported direct discharging of animal waste into the waterway. The FIRs were under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Northern India Canal Drainage Act.At Punjab Agricultural University’s police station, six individuals from the Humbran dairy complex — Kaalu Lala, Chajju Ram, Vinki, Mela Ram, Gusevak Singh, and Jagdev Singh — were named in the FIRs based on a complaint received from the municipal corporation’s executive engineer. At Division Number 7’s police station, five Tajpur Road complex dairies — Paras, Rakesh, Ram Milan, Paal, and Harsh (Krishan Lal) — were named in an FIR that the nodal officer for urban water and wastewater management had lodged.The owners face charges under Section 279 of the BNS, which pertains to fouling the water of a public spring or reservoir, alongside various violations of the Canal Drainage Act. The latest police intervention is part of an escalating effort to clean the Buddha Dariya, a seasonal stream that has long suffered from heavy industrial and agricultural pollution.Two owners from the Tajpur Road dairy complex were charged on Feb 26, another 10 on March 7, and four on March 14 after a visit from Punjab governor Gulab Chand Kataria. The mid-March crackdown reportedly came after the governor criticised the local civic body for ineffective utlisation of Tajpur Road’s effluent treatment plants. Inspections will continue as the state govt faces increasing pressure to restore the waterway’s ecology.
