New Delhi: More than seven months after over two dozen black bucks at Delhi`s National Zoological Park died after drinking contaminated water mixed with back-flowing storm water, the Delhi High Court Friday issued a notice to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
A division bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Sanjiv Khanna, taking suo motu cognisance of the news published in an English daily here, issued the notice, to be replied by June 1, on apprehension that the animals would face a similar fate this monsoon.
"The MCD has not even started the work for laying a storm water drain that would connect the zoo`s outlets to the existing drain running from under a railway line to the zoo`s eastern edge and emptying into the Yamuna," said the bench while issuing notice.
The black bucks - protected animals figuring in schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 - had died in September 2010 from drinking water contaminated by overflowing faulty sewage mixed with back-flowing storm water, which failed to drain out into the Yamuna as the channel was blocked.
The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) was supposed to fix the problem of sewage water overflows while the MCD had then said it would refurbish the channel leading to the Yamuna before next monsoon. Zoo officials said the DJB had completed its work but the MCD has not yet started anything.
The MCD plans to lay a storm water drain, which would run from Sunder Nagar railway culvert and then have an outfall at the Ring Road, officials said.
IANS
