The bench also passed interim orders on Tuesday prohibiting work at construction sites, brick kilns and stone crushing for one week in Delhi-National Capital Region
Even as the Capital’s smog has cleared off a bit, top officials from Delhi and neighbouring states of Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan were in National Green Tribunal’s (NGT) line of fire on Tuesday for non-compliance of its order, passed over the past year, on air pollution. A three-member bench headed by justice Swatanter Kumar warned the top officials of all states and asked them to come up with an action plan by Wednesday to implement orders on controlling vehicular pollution, dust pollution, crop burning, solid waste burning and other general precautions.
“How many of you have read our orders fully and then implemented them? When all this mess (pollution) was going on, when PM 2.5 pollution went up above 1000, what steps did you take except holding meetings? Why could you not deploy helicopters to sprinkle water? It is shocking that you did not do anything for the first five days,” said Justice Swatanter Kumar. The Tribunal passed five orders in relation to these issues over the past year in a petition filed by Vardhaman Kaushik.
The bench also passed interim orders on Tuesday prohibiting work at construction sites, brick kilns and stone crushing for one week in Delhi-National Capital Region. It has also asked officials of Delhi Development Authority, Delhi government and civic corporations to ensure than more than 50 per cent of its staff is on field to check pollution and they have to report back to the NGT on it.
Further, the bench took officials from Punjab and Haryana to task for their failure to stop the rampant burning of paddy straw, that aggravated Delhi’s air pollution. “Tell us one instance where you put out farm fires or provided machines for managing crop stubble. You knew that stubble burning will begin in August yet you did nothing since August. We had asked you to crack down on farm fires,” said the bench. The officials from Punjab and Haryana said that they had not extinguished any farm fires.
Last December, the green court’s principal bench had imposed fines between Rs 2,500 and Rs 15,000 on crop burning based on size of land holdings.
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