NGT hits out at Centre, states for doing nothing to check smog

Taking Delhi and its neighbouring states to task for not even reading its orders to curb pollution, National Green Tribunal today castigated them and the Centre for "playing a joke" on the people by doing nothing in the first five days when toxic smog engulfed the national capital region.
The green panel slammed the states for not taking steps to control stubble burning and gave a slew of directions, including giving a complete mechanism to implement its directions to curb air pollution by tomorrow.
Criticising the secretaries of Environment and Urban Development of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for not implementing its orders on crop burning, the tribunal asked them to read all its judgements and analyse and inform the steps they would take to implement them.

"First, we want to know how many of you have read the (NGT) orders on air pollution fully and implemented them? And if you say yes, remember you are falling into a trap because we will ask you about it. If you have not read it, be clear and honest. There can't be two answers,"it asked the officers.
When all of them replied in the negative, the bench asked them to go through all judgements, saying "this shows your first intention of being totally insensitive towards the environment."
Coming down heavily on the states for severe air quality, the bench said, "When all this mess was going on and Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5 pollution went up above 1000, what actual steps did you take on the ground except doing meetings?

"See what kind of joke you people play. You ask people who fix lights on the streets to sprinkle water with cranes to control dust pollution. Why could you not deploy helicopters to sprinkle water all over NCT Delhi?

"Is it beyond imagination? Even by common sense, only water can bring down the PM levels and improve air quality. It is shocking that for the first five days nobody did anything, be it the states or the Centre. Everybody was watching and waiting for the smog to intensify," the bench said.
As an interim measure, NGT banned all construction work in Delhi and NCR for the next 7 days to bring the smog under control and ordered halting operations of stone crushers and brick kilns in Delhi and NCR.

It directed the municipal corporations of Delhi to depute half of their staff to go to various sites across the city to ensure that no dust pollution is caused due to construction and there is no burning of municipal solid waste.
During the hearing, the bench also castigated the AAP
government for shutting schools without conducting any scientific study and asked how it came to the conclusion that pollution indoor was better than outdoor for children.
The green panel directed Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh governments to submit "preventive precautionary and punitive" measures to deal with such emergency situations and sought to know how complete coordination and cooperation can be done amongst them.

The environmental court said it was the duty of the states to see the alarming situation and act accordingly when Supreme Court, High Court and NGT were making "hue and cry".
"You suddenly wake up one day. Tell us why were these meetings not held prior to the harvesting season in Punjab and Haryana. These are known factors and they did not emerge suddenly. Your meteorological department can predict everything. Didn't you know about this," the NGT said.
Punjab government told the tribunal that out of 30 lakh hectares of agricultural land, nearly 19.70 million tonnes of crop residue is generated every year and only 1.02 million tonnes of remnant was being disposed by machines.

"Did any of the state governments provide incentives to farmers for not burning agriculture residue in the open as per our last year judgement? If you would have adequately compensated them and given them financial assistance, they would not have put fire to the crop residue," the bench told the states.
"How many machines have you provided to the farmers for agriculture waste disposals? On one hand your governments give free power to the farmers, why don't you withdraw assistance provided to the farmers if they persist with the default," the bench said.
It also directed the municipal corporations to go for mechanised cleaning of roads and use vacuum cleaning machines for the same.

The NGT deferred the matter for hearing tomorrow after it was informed that the Supreme Court was also hearing the case.