Law on civil penalties on anvil to protect environment

A stringent law on civil penalties providing for hefty fine and jail term is being framed by the Environment Ministry to deal with offenders of green norms, in sync with its policy of making compliance easy but violations costly.
Giving details of the proposed law, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said besides covering industries and other private entities, it will have provision to impose heavy penalties on government agencies, local bodies and state-run institutions.
Within the next two weeks, he said, inter-ministerial consultations on the draft law will be over following which it will be placed before the Cabinet for approval.

The main objective of bringing the legislation is to ensure strict enforcement of various environmental norms so that it can be protected effectively. The measure will help deal with the challenge of pollution and waste management, he said, adding the government wants to bring the law as soon as possible.
"The real problem is compliance. In our country, there are many laws and hundreds of rules but compliance is very weak. We must make compliance easy and violation very costly. On that principle, we have drafted the law on civil penalties which will act as deterrent as it will have provisions for heavy penalty against violators," Javadekar told PTI in an interview.

The Environment Minister said the new draft law will provide for both financial penalties and jail term for the violators.

"There will be financial penalties and provisions of jail. Earlier laws also had such provisions but they were very weak. We are revising them as per current situation," he said.
Javadekar said his Ministry has recently come out with six new waste management rules including solid waste management norms.
The Minister said the Government was majorly focusing on
containing pollution and dealing with the problem of increasing volume of solid waste.
"For common man, we have revamped six waste management rules. So we are addressing the clean India part as well as making everybody accountable at the same time.

"Large generators (of waste) must segregate, they will have to recycle. Local bodies are duty bound to take action holistically. We have built an institutional mechanism," Javadekar said.
The Ministry had recently notified new solid waste, e-waste, plastic, bio-medical, construction and demolition and hazardous waste management rules.
The Environment Minister said government's policy is to ensure ease of doing business but at the same time it will strictly enforce the green norms. We want not only to ensure ease of doing business, but also ease of doing business responsibly, he said.
Listing out initiatives to make the process of granting environmental clearance, he said approvals were accorded strictly following policy decisions and principle of standardisation and decentralisation.

Javadekar said, "Our mantra is sustainable development so we must care for environment. We have made environmental conditions, pollution norms more stringent. It is development without destruction."
Asked about air pollution in Delhi, he said Environment Ministry was working with various stakeholders to improve air quality in the national capital.
He said a three-year action plan has been devised to tackle air pollution in Delhi and government was seriously working on it.
"There is vehicular pollution, there is pollution from dust, pollution from stubble burning and industries. We have already tackled industrial pollution to a great extent. We have got good success in containing stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana," he said.

Referring to the government's decision to introduce Bharat VI standards from 2020 and not 2024 as envisaged earlier, the minister said, "That will improve the quality of diesel and petrol. 90 per cent of vehicular pollution will go and with all the new waste management rules, there will be less dust."
The Environment Minister described these measures as part of a "long-term, sustainable and permanent remedy" to deal with vehicular pollution.