New Delhi Apr 24 PTI The Delhi government is making one last effort to salvage the water bodies which have gone extinct over the years due to large-scale encroachment and negligence There are 1043 water bodies in the capital which have been allotted unique identification numbers1014 of them have been mapped on the GIS platform The Wetland Authority of Delhi constituted in 2019 is now making rapid strides to notify at least 20 of them under Wetland Conservation and Management Rules 2017by January next year according to officials These include Sanjay Lake Hauz Khas Lake Bhalswa Lake Tikri Khurd Lake Welcome Jheel Daryapur Kalan and Sardar Sarovar Lake Once notified the water bodies will be protected against encroachments dumping of garbage discharge of untreated wastewater and effluent from industries and setting up and expansion of industries etc In March the Wetland Authority of Delhi had received a request from land-owning agencies to delete 258 extinct water bodies from the official list of 1043 wetlands in the capital as public and private utilities have come up in their place According to officials private buildings have come up in place of 62 water bodies52 are now being used to provide public services 37 are untraceable 14 have been encroached upon by educational institutes 11 have been turned into parks andrecreational centres 6 are being used for commercial services and unauthorised colonies have come up on 5 A technical committee is now reviewing the request for the deletion of water bodies from the official list they said At a meeting held on March 28 the panel proposed to conduct a survey to ascertain the level of degradation of these water bodies and prepare a Red Document -- which will include those that cannot be saved -- and a Green Document listing the ones which can be reclaimed and restored The water bodies that cannot be revived will be deleted from the list Field teams have been constituted for ground truthing These will collect crucial information such as the historic spread of these water bodies their capacity how they went extinct who was responsible what has come up in their place etc a member of the technical committee said on condition of anonymity One of the teams has already surveyed a cluster of eight to nine extinct water bodies in north Delhi district The process is going to take some time another member of the panel said He said the panel will try to compensate for the loss of water bodies by asking the encroachers be it a private individual a government agency or an educational institution to provide alternate land for the development of wetlands The purpose is to discourage further encroachment of wetlands in Delhi Those responsible should be penalised a panel member said We will also try to remove the encroachment wherever feasible If a structure has come up on a part of a wetland we will try to remove it It could be our last attempt to salvage some of the extinct wetlands he said PTI GVS RCJ RCJ

New Delhi Mar 22 PTI Delhi Water Minister Satyendar Jain Tuesday said the Yamuna river in the national capital will be completely cleaned and made fit for bathing and propagation of fish by December 2023 All the wastewater in Delhi will be tapped in the next six months and all areas will be linked to the sewer network in the next 15 months he said at a virtual session organised by Assocham We will clean the Yamuna by December 2023 and not 2025 All the drains will be completely cleaned I am confident We will invite you all to take a dip in any stretch of the river in Delhi he said The Yamuna and all the drains in Delhi will be so clean that you will find fish in the water Jain added The minister also said that in the next five to 10 years Delhis groundwater table will be as good as it was 50 years ago We conducted an experiment on 25 acres of land at Palla on the northern outskirts of the capital city near the Delhi-Haryana border It proved successful and we are replicating it now he said The Palla project was a part of the Delhi governments endeavour to augment the citys water supply The three-year pilot project which started in 2019 involved retaining excess Yamuna water in shallow reservoirs on the floodplains during the monsoon season The government had created a 25-acre pond on the floodplains of the Yamuna to retain floodwater and installed 33 piezometers to ascertain the rise in groundwater levels PTI GVS RCJ RCJ

New Delhi Feb 23 PTI The Delhi zoo will reopen for visitors on March1 after remaining closed for around two months in view of a spike in coronavirus cases in the national capital officials said on Wednesday An official said the zoo was closed for the public on January4 and the link for booking tickets online on its website was disabled The administration has directed all section supervisors to ensure strict complianceof COVID-19 behaviour as the zoo gears up for reopening the official said Thezoo was reopened for visitors on August 1 2021 more than two months after it was shut due to a rise in the number of Covid cases during the second wave of the pandemic Earlier the facility was shut for visitors in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic started ravaging the country and then again in January last year amid bird flu scare PTI GVS RCJ RCJ