Hardly 12 km of the 27 km line to carry effluents from the Naroda, Odhav, Vatva, and Narol estates has been laid, as the 1,000-odd units are not paying what they were asked to, and are instead reportedly trying to bring pressure on the State Government to bear more of the project cost.

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), which is to implement the project costing Rs 35 crore, has been able to collect only Rs 4.65 crore from the units.

The Gujarat High Court had, in 1995, directed the State Government, GIDC and the AMC to lay lines to carry the treated industrial effluent to AMC's Pirana plant, from where it would be discharged into the river.

The units were to bear the entire cost, paying Rs 5 per litre of effluents they discharged. The court hadruled further that in case a common treatment plant was required to be set up for these industrial estates, public funds should not be spent on them. The court initially set a December 1995 deadline for completion of the project, but in December 1997 extended it to October 1998.

But it seems unlikely that even this deadline will be met. Many of the industries have again challenged the order, saying it was the statutory obligation of the State Government or the AMC to lay the pipes.

The unwillingness of the units to pay is evident: when the case was on in HC in 1995, the associations of units in the four estates had said they discharged a total of 120 million litres per day (MLD), assuming they would only have to pay a lump sum for the project.

Based on this, the AMC prepared the Rs 35 crore pipeline project. But when the court said they would have to pay Rs 5 per litre of effluents, they immediately scaled down the figure. In 1998, they claimed they were discharging only 54 MLD.

On the other hand, theindustries pressured the State Government to finance the project completely. During the Rashtriya Janata Party (RJP) regime, the government and AMC had agreed to give Rs 5 crore each for the project. But the industries have not contributed the rest of the amount, some Rs 25 crore.

On Tuesday, industrialists met the ministers, but to no avail. The Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Utkarsh Shah said industries were unwilling to pay as they felt it was obligatory on the part of AMC and GIDC to lay the pipes, especially as units paid taxes and octroi.

The industries also quoted a Central Government notification to get the State and Central Government to each bear 25 per cent of the cost of effluent treatment plants, but a close reading went against them.

Even within the State Government, the issue is shuttling between various departments. Asked about the project, Industries Minister Suresh Mehta, who attended the Tuesday meeting, said the matter did not come under his department, and saidDeputy Minister of Environment and Forests Parbatsinh Chauhan would answer. Chauhan passed the buck to Environment Minister Kanjibhai Patel.

Patel agreed that there was indeed a dispute over financing the project, and that industries were trying to pressure the government into paying another Rs 8 crore (over the Rs 5 crore agreed earlier) to finance the project. Negotiations would continue, he said.

Patel also said that another hitch at the Tuesday meeting was that Reliance Industries (Textiles Division) Limited, which has a unit at Naroda discharging some 18 MLD, was refusing to pay the Rs 9 crore due.

However, a RIL spokesman disclaimed the figure. He said the unit discharged only 1.4 to 1.6 MLD of ``treated effluent'', and that it met ``Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) norms''. He said RIL's objection was not to paying, but to being called a ``polluting unit''.

``We will make the contribution as a social gesture, but not as a polluting unit, especially because GPCB and the government havecleared RIL as a non-polluting industry,'' he said.