The Supreme Court today set a deadline of June 30 this year for the Centre to decide on the issue of banning import of pet coke and said the government's failure on this count would compel it to pass a direction.
The court also asked the government to consider implementing the ambitious National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) in Delhi first as the people here were "struggling" due to pollution. The NCAP is aimed at tackling the air pollution problem in 100 cities across the country.
A bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta observed this after Additional Solicitor General A N S Nadkarni, appearing for the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), said discussions were underway on the issue of banning the import of pet coke and it would take around six weeks to take a decision.
"Please expedite it. You cannot go on like this. By June 30, you take a decision, else we will take a decision," the bench told Nadkarni.
On the NCAP, the bench said "you have lots of programmes but you cannot implement them. You cannot implement the programmes in Delhi and you are talking about pan-India. You at least implement it (NCAP) in Delhi first."
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