HC seeks senior officials' presence on 'depressing state' of Anand Vihar

The Delhi High Court on Thursday pulled up government authorities for "depressing state" of Anand Vihar area in national capital and asked various senior officials to appear before it to explain why no action was taken to improve the air quality.

A division bench of Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Ashutosh Kumar hearing PILs relating to increasing air pollution in Delhi, was shown a presentation with photographs and videos by amicus curiae, senior advocate Kailash Vasdev where roads of Anand Vihar in east Delhi were full of dust, construction debris and encroached by street vendors and taxis.

"The photographs reveal very depressing state of affairs of Anand Vihar area. There is unfinished construction, debris, plastic waste, dust lying along the roads and on the roads. The public roads are appear to be encroached by taxi, buses owners, vendors, food stalls. Because of combination of all these as we pointed out in earlier orders pollution level PM 2.5 and PM 10 is extremely high in Anand Vihar," said the bench.

The court after taking into note the photographs and videos shown by Vasudev, sought presence of Commissioner of East Delhi Municipal Corporation, Chief engineer PWD (East zone), project in charge Delhi Metro, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), senior official of Northern Railways and General Manager ISBT bus terminal on February 16 to explain why work not done.

The court warned contempt of court action against officials if they fail to give proper explanation.

The court said government authorities failed to do any ground level work despite its repeated orders. "We had indicated certain measures to be taken to bring down pollution level, but the photographs reveal entirely different story and indicate noting has been done at ground level." it said.

The court had earlier asked the government agencies to remove encroachments from public roads, debris and optimise the traffic management, after after it was conveyed that levels of harmful pollutants that people are exposed to in Anand Vihar were recently found to be two to four times higher than the air pollution levels in other part of Delhi, which are several times more than the standard.

--IANS

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