Revitalization of Rivers in India Draft Policy - Isha Guru Jaggi Vasudev

Revitalization of Rivers In India
Draft Policy Recommendation
DRAFT NOTIFICATION ON RIVER REGULATION ZONE (RRZ)
The protection of rivers calls for regulation and prohibition of
certain activities in the river bed and its floodplain by demarcation of
necessary zones. Unfortunately, India does not have any legislation to
protect the free-flowing status of any of its rivers.
The recent attempt to notify a River Regulation Zone (RRZ) has
been the first step in providing the kind of attention that rivers need
today. In March 2017, MoEFCC had sent a draft River Regulation Zone
notification to State Governments seeking their views. The RRZ, which
is modeled on the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ), proposes to prohibit
and regulate activities on the river front and floodplains. It also seeks to
have a National River Conservation Authority headed by the Secretary of
MoEFCC. The main characteristics of the proposed RRZ are: 19
• The proposed River Regulation Zones will be under the ambit of the
Environment Protection Act, 1986.
• There are three regulatory zones proposed under RRZ, defined
differently for rivers flowing at less than 300 m elevation, and for
mountain rivers and hill streams:
1. Prohibited Activities Zone (RRZ-PA)
2. Restricted Activities Zone (RRZ-RA-I)
3. Regulated Activities Zone (RRZ-RA-II)
Within each of these zones, there are prohibited, restricted,
regulated and permitted activities (see Table 1).
The mooting of this notification in itself is encouraging, but the
zones and the size of the zones seem to be not acceptable to the states.
The Maharashtra CM has scrapped this zonation as he did not think it
benefited anyone, 20 while CM of Odisha Shri Naveen Patnaik finds that
this zonation is impractical in his state where the total length of all the
rivers put together is 12,000 km. 21 If the suggested norms were to be
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