Coming down heavily on the environment ministry, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has asked it to prepare a scheme on compliance of standards of coal supply in the country. Besides directions to frame the mechanism, the tribunal has imposed a "litigation cost" running into a few lakhs on the ministry, along with a warning of "cohesive action", to the extent of attaching the ministry's property if it continues to delay proceedings.
Coming down heavily on the environment ministry, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has asked it to prepare a scheme on compliance of standards of coal supply in the country. Besides directions to frame the mechanism, the tribunal has imposed a "litigation cost" running into a few lakhs on the ministry, along with a warning of "cohesive action", to the extent of attaching the ministry's property if it continues to delay proceedings.
"In case the aforesaid directions are not complied with, the tribunal will be compelled to enhance the litigation costs and issue further directions to recover the costs by coercive method, through agency of civil court, by attachment of property of the ministry," reads an April 20 order passed by the western bench headed by justice VR Kingaonkar.
The ministry has been asked to sit with all the stakeholders within the next four weeks to work it out. Also, the policy has to be put up on the official website of the ministry within one week of guidelines being prepared.
"We direct that within four weeks, the secretary, joint secretary, director concerned of the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF), and, if so required, stakeholders called by them hold a common meeting in the office of MoEF to prepare scheme for control mechanism and relevant guidelines, as to how standards for coal at the source, as well as at the point of use, shall be ensured by the MoEF and/or local state boards and, if any deviation is noticed by the MoEF, what kind of action shall be taken against the industry/coal fields or the parties concerned, whosoever may be the defaulting party. The nature of inspections and sampling protocol, actions, stringent actions in case of repeated defaults, cancellation of permits/licence in case of certain abuse by the agencies and all other defaults, coordination strategy, so on and so forth, shall be duly covered by such protocol and guidelines," the order explains.
The tribunal also slammed the response filed by the joint secretary, calling it "totally dissatisfactory" and "not indicating any seriousness to address the issue".
"The tribunal, in fact, wants to know what kind of appropriate control mechanism is adopted by the MoEF to ensure compliance of standards of coal supply to the power plants run on coal as a fuel, and coal which is received from mines, and to verify mechanism for avoiding loss during transit by the industry/supplier concerned," the order read.
Justifying the imposition of the litigation cost, the tribunal said the present application has been pending for over a year now. "The petition appears to have been filed in the interest of general public and environment.
Considering these aspects, protraction of such litigation by the MoEF, without reason or rhyme, is unexpected and unsuitable to the case. We deem it proper, therefore, to direct that MoEF shall pay adjournment costs of Rs25,000 to each of the advocates, appearing for the applicant and the respondents," reads the judgment.
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