The Howrah Municipal Corporation, as the local authority, has a responsibility to maintain water bodies and grant development permission in accordance with the provisions of the West Bengal Town & Country (Planning & Development) Act, 1979 and the amended notification dated 6th November, 1986, which strictly restricts the development of water bodies.

Ashok Kumar Mathur, CJ: This is a public interest litigation filed by one public spirited body known as Howrah Ganatantrik Nagarik Samity. In this public interest litigation number of issues have been raised with regard to maintenance of greenery of Howrah town and to take proper action by the respondents, including the Howrah Municipal Corporation to keep a proper ecological balance of the town and maintain proper cleanliness and not to permit pollution of the Hooghly river and many other reliefs were also sought.

2. The controversy traveled to the Apex Court and the Apex Court by its order dated 16th April, 1996 remitted this matter back to this Court before the Green Bench to take up the issues involved in the matter. In the present case the whole controversy has now been centered around maintenance of the water bodies which is considered to be essential for the health of Howrah town. Any disturbance to these water bodies is likely to disturb the ecological balance of the whole town. Therefore, we are concerned with regard to maintenance of the water bodies. From time to time number of orders were passed by this Court from 1996 till date with regard to maintenance of the township and other related matters. These orders need not be repeated here. At present the controversy is centered round the illegal filling up of the water bodies which is creating much of the problem. The question before us is that how many water bodies are presently in existence. There was a lot of dispute about the number of the water bodies which are in existence and which are being illegally filled up by developers for construction of multi storeyed buildings. The petitioner No.2 (appearing in person) submitted that since the maintenance of water bodies is an essential part of the environment and if all the water bodies are filled up and multi storeyed buildings are constructed thereon then the ecological balance of the whole area is likely to be seriously affected. Therefore, a direction was given to the petitioner to furnish the statement of the water bodies, according to him, presently in existence. Mr. Dutt, the petitioner No.2 appearing in person submitted a list of water bodies numbering 188. This was disputed by the Howrah Municipal Corporation and the Howrah Municipal Corporation filed a list of water bodies by way of an affidavit wherein it was submitted that the Inspector of Survey Department made inquiry and found that 131 water bodies still exists. Out of those 131 water bodies 5 water bodies were situated outside the territorial limit of Howrah Municipal Corporation and 21 holdings could not be ascertained. It was pointed out in the annexure to the affidavit that 128 holdings still exists small or large and all these holdings belong to private individuals. Then a direction was given to the Pollution Control Board to conduct a joint survey of all these water bodies and submit a report. The Pollution Control Board submitted a report after a joint survey comprising of the representative from the District Administration, Land and Land Reforms Department, Fisheries Department, Government of West Bengal and Howrah Municipal Corporation. In the report filed by the Pollution Control Board a statement was annexed showing the details of the water bodies. After going through the said statement given by the Pollution Control Board it becomes more than apparent that the statement given by the Howrah Municipal Corporation and the petitioner is not correct and deducted by the authorities it appears that some of the water bodies are partly in existent and some are nonexistent and some are existing in their original capacity. Let this annexure be taken as a part of this judgement appended as schedule to this judgement. These holdings as per the statement of Howrah Municipal Corporation belong to private parties and the private parties who are the owner of these water bodies are not party before us. The learned counsel for the Howrah Municipal Corpo