Jojari River Pollution: Key Issues
- Supreme Court intervention: The Supreme Court has reprimanded the Rajasthan government over industrial effluents entering the Jojari River, posing serious health risks to communities dependent on the river. The problem has persisted for decades, with a public interest litigation (PIL) before the Rajasthan High Court raising concerns as early as 2011.
- Affected rivers and regions: The Jojari, Luni and Bandi are seasonal rivers in western Rajasthan, flowing through Jodhpur, Balotra and Pali districts. The region’s textile-dyeing and steelworking industries discharge untreated or inadequately treated effluents into rivers and soil, threatening the health of approximately 20 lakh residents.
- Inadequate sewage treatment: According to submissions made by the State in 2025, sewage treatment plants could handle only around half of the sewage generated in the three urban centres. The Supreme Court also recorded substantial underutilisation of common effluent treatment plants (CETPs), suggesting poor industrial connections to treatment facilities, deliberate bypassing of treatment systems and/or inadequate capacity at specific sites or during certain periods.
- Illegal sand mining: Unregulated extraction of sand from riverbeds further damages river ecosystems and indicates weak enforcement of environmental and mining regulations.
Supreme Court’s Directions and Regulatory Action
- Suo motu proceedings: In 2025, the Supreme Court initiated a suo motu writ petition and constituted a High-level Ecosystem Oversight Committee, chaired by Justice Sangeet Lodha, to audit treatment plants and prepare a river-restoration plan.
- Restrictions on construction and industries: Based on the committee’s critical status reports, Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta prohibited construction within 100 metres of river edges and hazardous industries within 500 metres of the rivers’ current courses or identified flood lines, where available.
- Failure of regulatory enforcement: The Court criticised local authorities for failing to enforce pollution norms. Officials were reportedly aware of illegal mining in certain areas but nevertheless regularised leases, raising concerns about administrative negligence and possible collusion between officials and industrial interests.
- Earlier environmental compensation: The Court referred to its own stay of a 2022 National Green Tribunal (NGT) order imposing compensation on the Rajasthan State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation and local administrations in Jodhpur and Barmer. The stay had been cited by authorities in explaining their enforcement failures.
Environmental and Legal Principles
- Polluter Pays Principle: Polluters must bear the costs of preventing, controlling and remedying environmental damage. The Supreme Court observed that the Rajasthan government itself could be held liable under this principle for environmental harm resulting from its negligence.
- Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs): These facilities treat wastewater from multiple industrial units, particularly small and medium enterprises that may not be able to operate individual treatment plants. Their effective functioning requires adequate capacity, proper industrial connections and compliance monitoring.
- Suo motu jurisdiction: Courts may initiate proceedings on their own when serious violations of rights or public interest come to their attention, without waiting for a formal petition by an affected party.
Challenges in River Restoration
- Administrative accountability: The persistence of pollution despite judicial and administrative awareness points to failures in monitoring, enforcement and coordination, with possible collusion between public officials and industrial operators.
- Restoration beyond judicial intervention: The State must restore the Jojari River and ensure its long-term ecological health. The article cautions that repeated judicial intervention risks substituting courts for environmental regulators instead of making the executive discharge its statutory responsibilities.
- Way forward: Rajasthan must ensure adequate treatment capacity, connect industrial units to CETPs, prevent untreated discharges, regulate sand mining, fix accountability for regulatory lapses and implement a sustained river-restoration programme.
