NGT lambasts municipal corporations over waste burning

The National Green Tribunal today took civic bodies to task over incidents of waste burning in the national capital and slammed municipal corporations for their failure to implement its order banning such activity.
"What do you want to say about media reports regarding various incidents of burning of plastic and other waste in different parts of Delhi. They have published photographs on this. How is that the media is able to find incidents of waste burning, but you people cannot.
"Have your corporations done anything good in the history of Delhi except finding faults with other departments. Except submitting papers to us, what has your engineering and administrative departments done for the betterment of Delhi," a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said.

The observations came while hearing a case related to the air pollution in the city.
The green panel directed all the municipal corporations to inform it by tomorrow what action they have taken to stop burning of municipal solid waste in the city and also provide complete details on challans carried out in this regard during the last week.
During the hearing, the lawyer appearing for various municipal corporations informed the bench that they have carried out challans against the people found guilty of waste burning and flouting construction norms.

However, when the bench inquired about specific data on waste burning, the corporations sought time till tomorrow.

The matter is now listed for hearing tomorrow.
On April 28 last year, the tribunal had imposed a complete ban on burning of waste in open including garbage, leaves, plastic and crop residues in Delhi-NCR and said violators would be fined Rs 5,000.