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Supreme Court modifies Diwali cracker ban order

Gives nod to burst green crackers in Delhi and NCR

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday made two major concessions ahead of Diwali by restricting its green cracker use only to Delhi and national capital region (NCR) and leaving it open for states to fix the two-hour window for bursting crackers on festival days.

The clarification by SC came on a clutch of applications moved by firework manufacturers seeking modification of the October 23 order. The SC had directed an eco-friendly Diwali by mandating use of green crackers, banning series crackers or ladis, restricting bursting of crackers from 8 pm to 10 pm at designated places for community fireworks. In addition to the prohibited list of chemicals used in crackers such as antimony, lithium, mercury, arsenic and lead, the Court added barium, which made manufacturers fume as they claimed barium is an inseparable component in fireworks.

The bench of Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan gave a day's time to the Centre to suggest whether fireworks could be manufactured without using barium salts. In addition, the Court clarified that its order on green crackers applied only to Delhi-NCR and not the entire country. This would mean that crackers manufactured till October 23 that did not conform to eco-friendly standards will now find a market outside Delhi-NCR.

Environment minister Ramdas Kadam said that he would convene a meeting on November 1 to take a decision on the issue. Home department officials said they would implement the restriction after the environment department takes a decision on it.

Even state governments complained to the Court that the restriction on bursting of crackers from 8 pm to 10 pm was not practical. Tamil Nadu informed the Court that Diwali is celebrated in the state during the day and not night.

He requested to stagger the timing into one-and-a-half hour slots both during the day and night. The bench was adamant on sticking to the two-hour window. However, it was left to the respective states to issue directions whether this window will be during the day or night or one-hour each in the day and night.

Exploring the feasibility of green crackers or crackers without barium salts, the bench asked the Petroleum and Explosive Safety Organization (PESO) under the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry to file a response, considered crucial for issuing any modification to the Court's earlier order.

The Centre is expected to submit that manufacturing crackers without barium is possible. The PESO in its study conducted on this aspect concluded that fireworks such as rockets, amerces, roll caps, dot caps, ring caps, atom bomb, chorsa, maroons (like Lakshmi, Kurvi, etc), red sparklers, red colour matches, red pellets and yellow pellets do not use barium. These fireworks constitute 40-50 per cent of the existing firework stock in market.

On the other hand, the fireworks that exclusively rely on barium include flower pots (anars), ground chakkar, pencil or torch, twinkling stars, sparklers or fulcharis (except red), pellets (except red/yellow/orange), serpent eggs, and colour matches (except red and yellow).

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