National Green Tribunal thinks the "polluter pays" principle should be applied selectively on industrial units

By A Representative
Does the National Green Tribunal (NGT) believe that the well-known polluters pay principle should be applied in exceptional cases only? It would seem so, if a recent judgment it delivered is any guide. Giving its order in a case filed by Gujarat’s environmental body, Paryavaran Mitra, against Hanjer Biotech Energies Pvt Ltd (HBEPL), contracted to dispose of solid waste by the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC), the NGT has reluctantly said the principle be applied on HBEPL. In an order delivered on December 20, it said it believes that the “polluter pays principle” ought to be applied in “peculiar circumstances” alone.
Interestingly, the NGT’s view has come when Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS) has filed public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court (click HERE) asking the latter to ensure strict implementation of the “polluter pays principle”, even as demanding that industrial polluters should pay back all the subsidies provided by the various governments to control pollution. The apex court has issued notice to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Government of India, and chief secretaries of 19 states seeking their response in the matter.
India’s premier quasi-judicial body NGT’s apparent soft attitude towards a party which it declared polluter has come despite the fact that it has accused the HBEPL for failing to take “proper precaution for maintenance of landfill site” and “aggravating the problem of threat to the environment”. It had added, “Inspections carried out from time to time indicated that the contractor had not arranged for proper leachate collection and treatment facilities”.
The NGT observed that the landfill site was “partly covered with plastic sheet”, that there “the excess wastes residue” was being “stacked over and passed over”, and that construction of another landfill site had been “delayed for more than five years” leading to “improper storage and management of municipal solid waste (MSW), resulting into foul smell due to tearing of plastic cover, flowing of leachate, particularly so during rainy season, thereby causing air pollution as well as water pollution.”
It also said that “untreated MSW” was flowing “along with rainy water from the slope of small hillock towards the village side”, adding, all this happened despite the fact that the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) “issued several notices to RMC, indicating deficiencies in the operation of the MSW management plant”. The RMC, apparently, overlooked these notices. In fact, it said, “HBEPL is only a contractor of RMC and therefore has no separate legal rights as such.”
The NGT underlined, “It was repeatedly pointed out that leachate collection and treatment was improper. It was further pointed out by GPCB that at the landfill site, leachate was flowing outside the premises during rainy season creating pools of contaminated water outside the landfill site.”
It even found that this was “a fit case”, in which those villagers, who are having agricultural lands or residences living close to the epicentre “of the present site”, including villagers of Nakravadi, Pipaliya, Nagalpar, Khijadiya, Rajgadh, Sokhda and Hadmatiya etc. should be “identified and be paid compensation.”
Based on all this, it directed the Gujarat Pollution Control Board to carry out a complete survey of all MSWs operated by Gujarat's municipal corporations of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Junagarh and Gandhinagar, apart from Rajkot, as also 50-odd municipalities. The survey reports, it added, should be handed over to the state urban development department, which must ensure that the laxity observed in Rajkot does resurface at othr places.
However, the compensation payable, it declared, has to be just about Rs 20,000 to each farmer who has suffered because of the pollution, for which the district collector, Rajkot, should carry out a survey. And for this, it should "tentatively" deposit a sum of Rs 25 lakh with the district collector. As for the environment body which filed the application, the polluter must pay Rs 1 lakh as expenses, it said, even as rejecting the applicant's contention that the landfill site be handed back to the villages it belonged to.

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Counterview

Search This Blog