Ban on pet coke and furnace oil: SC to hear matter on Dec 13

The Supreme Court today said it would hear on Wednesday the issue relating to relaxation of the ban on the use of pet coke and furnace oil in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana for the cement industry and thermal power plants.
The Centre had earlier informed the top court that the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has issued a direction prohibiting the use of pet coke and furnace oil until further orders in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana.
The use of pet coke and furnace oil is already prohibited in Delhi.
The matter today came up for hearing before a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta and Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that NTPC's thermal power plants uses only 0.03 per cent of furnace oil.

The issue of evolving a regulation on the use of pet coke and furnace oil if the ban was relaxed was also raised before the court.
The Ministry of Environment and Forest said they were in the process of having a mechanism for regulating the use of pet coke and furnace oil if the ban was relaxed.

The ministry had earlier told the court that the ban may be relaxed for a certain period for power generation and cement manufacturing industries as their use was miniscule.
The court had on October 24 banned the use of pet coke and furnace oil in the three states from November 1 in view of the pollution levels in Delhi-NCR and noted that these states had no objection to it.

The court was hearing a PIL filed in 1985 by environmentalist M C Mehta who had raised the issue of air pollution in the Delhi-NCR.