- By Brij Khandelwal
Two New apex court Orders: No Tree Cutting Without Permission; Drains Opening into Yamuna to Be Tapped
Despite Supreme Court Orders, Agra Still Struggles with Environmental Crisis
2025.05.05 (Vrindavan Today News): Once again, Agra finds itself at a crossroads, where the Supreme Court had to step in to address the city’s environmental crises. In its recent directives, the apex court ordered all drains flowing into the Yamuna River to be tapped within four months and imposed a ban on tree cutting without prior permission.
However, the Supreme Court’s judicial activism has long been viewed with skepticism by Agra’s business and industrial sectors. Many factory owners and builders believe that the Court’s restrictions have prevented Agra from becoming a “world-class” city defined by growth and prosperity.
But a closer look at Agra’s environmental history tells a different story. The formation of the Taj Trapezium Zone (TTZ) Authority and repeated Supreme Court interventions—spurred by environmentalist M.C. Mehta’s public interest litigations—may have actually saved Agra, Mathura, and Firozabad from a major ecological disaster.
Mehta’s 1984 petition highlighted the severe threats to the Taj Mahal from industrial emissions, vehicular pollution, and acid rain caused primarily by sulfur dioxide. Had the Supreme Court not acted, foundries, chemical plants, and particularly the Mathura Refinery would have continued using polluting fuels like coal and coke, severely degrading air and water quality.
The Court’s stringent orders in 1996 not only shut down polluting industries but also mandated the adoption of clean fuels and the construction of sewage treatment plants.
Some argue that without these restrictions, Agra might have experienced short-term industrial growth—but at a huge long-term economic and environmental cost. The truth is, without the TTZ and judicial oversight, Agra could today be a backward, polluted city—robbed of both its heritage and its quality of life.
That said, many of the Supreme Court’s key directives have still not been fully implemented. The primary reasons: lack of political will and bureaucratic apathy.
In 1993, acting on M.C. Mehta’s petition, the Supreme Court recommended wide-ranging measures based on the report of a high-level committee led by Dr. S. Varadarajan. These included controlling air and water pollution, reviving the Yamuna, regulating tree cutting, restoring community ponds, preserving heritage sites, and closely monitoring industries.
Environmental expert Dr. Debashish Bhattacharya states, “Even three decades later, TTZ’s condition reveals that these measures were either poorly implemented or merely symbolic.” The Court had ordered 292 polluting industries to either relocate or switch to clean fuels like natural gas, banned coal usage, and called for green belts to control dust. It also mandated year-round fresh water flow in the Yamuna to maintain the Taj Mahal’s foundation, dredging of the riverbed, a ban on cattle movement, removal of polluting activities like the Dhobighat and Tajganj crematorium, and proposed key infrastructure projects like the Yamuna Barrage, sewage treatment plants, and improved drainage.
Unfortunately, little or slow progress has been made on these critical fronts, yielding no substantial improvement.
Members of the River Connect Campaign lament that the Yamuna’s plight has become a symbol of this failure. Despite budget allocations, the barrage project remains on paper. The river’s water level is nearly zero due to leather waste, household trash, and industrial toxins—making it unfit even for animals. Encroachments in the floodplain continue unchecked, and National Green Tribunal orders are routinely ignored.
Transport companies along the riverbank flout pollution norms, and the Tajganj crematorium is still operational. Air quality is worse—suspended particulate matter (SPM) levels often exceed 350 micrograms per cubic meter, soaring to 600 in summer, while the permissible limit is only 100.
The green cover in TTZ has shrunk below 6%, far short of the national target of 33%. Community ponds have vanished, replaced by concrete sprawl. Tree plantation in Agra’s western zone remains confined to files. There’s no strong monitoring mechanism to ensure Supreme Court directives are followed.
Established in 1999, the TTZ Authority lacks clear responsibilities and effective powers, rendering it largely inactive. The absence of coordination between various departments—like the Agra Development Authority and Pollution Control Boards—has erased accountability.
Had the Supreme Court’s well-meaning orders been implemented with sincerity and resolve, TTZ could have become a model ecological zone—demonstrating to the world how to balance heritage conservation with sustainable development.
But that didn’t happen. Today, Agra is neither a heritage city nor a smart city.
