Bhagwant Mann Hospitalised After Drinking Water From This River – Free PDF Download

What has happened?

• Two days after he drank a glassful of water directly from Kali Bein, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann was admitted to Delhi’s Indraprastha Apollo Hospital with a stomachache late on Tuesday.
• Sources said that he was taken ill with a severe stomachache at his official residence in Chandigarh on Tuesday night. From there, he was airlifted and admitted to the hospital in Delhi.
• His ailment was kept a closely guarded secret by the government as he was rushed to the Capital without his entire security staff.
• The Chief Minister’s Office did not confirm the CM’s hospitalisation even as an official said that he was hale and hearty, and has a packed day on Thursday with scheduled back-to-back meetings.
• Sources, however, indicated that his ailment was related to drinking of water directly from the rivulet.

What is Kali Bein?

• The 165-km rivulet starts from Hoshiarpur, runs across four districts and meets the confluence of the rivers Beas and Sutlej in Kapurthala.

• Along its banks are around 80 villages and half a dozen small and big towns.
• Waste water from there as well as industrial waste used to flow into the rivulet via a drain, turning its waters black, hence the name Kali Bein (black rivulet).
• Dense grass and weeds grew on the water until a cleaning project started.

Why did the CM drink water from it?

• The occasion was the 22nd anniversary of the cleaning project, which had started on July 16, 2000.
• The project has been slow for years after having made remarkable progress in the initial years.
• Nevertheless, when Mann drank water from it directly, it was a much cleaner Kali Bein than it was before 2000.
• The Kali Bein is of great significance to Sikh religion and history, because the first Guru, Nanak Dev, is said to have got enlightenment here.
• When Guru Nanak Dev was staying at Sultanpur Lodhi with his sister Bebe Nanki, he would bathe in the Kali Bein.
• He is said to have disappeared into the waters one day, before emerging on the third day.
• The first thing he recited was the “Mool Mantra” of the Sikh religion.

How the cleaning project started?

• It was started by environmentalist Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal (now AAP Rajya Sabha MP), a former Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) member, with a handful of followers, without government help.
• They removed weeds, treated the water and spread awareness among residents.
• Six years of hard work paid off when then President A P J Abdul Kalam visited the site in 2006 and praised them for their
• The then Congress government in Punjab then announced that it would take up the project to stop the discharge of untreated water into the rivulet.
• The government identified around 73 villages in three districts releasing sewer water into the Kali Bein.
• The project required every village to build a large pond to collect the sewer water, which would be processed in a water treatment plant and the water then used for irrigation.
• The land for the ponds was to be provided by panchayats.

So what’s the current status?

• The work for 18 villages was completed in 2006-07, but the project has made very slow progress since.
• Today, around 30 to 40 villages and towns have illegal colonies that are discharging untreated water into the Kali Bein.
• Every year, a large number of fish die in the Kali Bein because of lack of oxygen in the polluted water.
• In several villages, land meant for a pond has been encroached.
• At some places, treatment plants are not working properly and are known to often discharge untreated water.
• Sewerage Board officials said these plants require funds, but the government does not have enough to spare.
• At one stage, the project had become a role model for river cleaning missions.
• The ‘Kali Bein Model’ was cited as the blueprint for the National Mission for Clean Ganga.
• Uma Bharti, then Union Minister for Water Resources, River Project and Ganga Rejuvenation, visited the Kali Bein in 2015, and called it a Guru Sthan for the Ganga project.
• She sent leaders of around 500 village panchayats to observe the model and adopt it in their villages.
• The Delhi government too had announced that it would adopt the model for cleaning the Yamuna.

Q) Which of the following is not a waterborne disease?

1. Measles
2. Typhoid
3. Cholera
4. Hepatitis

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