Puri Hotels Issued Notice Over Pollution Norms

The establishments include Hotel Mayfair, a star category hotel owned by union food processing minister Dillip Ray.

The pollution control board has charged all these hotels with discharging their effluents into the sea, municipal sewerage and open drains in gross violation of the law. Meanwhile, the regional office of the Union environment ministry is also learnt to have slapped a separate notice on some of the beach hotels in Puri for alleged violation of pollution control norms and coastal zone regulation (CRZ).

The action of the state board and the environment ministry comes in the wake of protests by the state's green activists. The environmentalists have accused all sea side hotels in Puri of not only spoiling the beach by dumping their untreated effluents on it but also violating the CRZ by locating their properties well within the prohibited 500 metres of the high tide line. The Hotel and Restaurant Association of Orissa, however, dismissed the charges and launched a counter attack on the activists saying they were raising the bogey of pollution control norms violation to hamper the development of tourism in Orissa.

 

The pollution control board notice has put Puri's district administration in a tight spot. The administration has ignored the mushrooming growth of resorts and hotels on the beach in the past few years as some of the most controversial constructions were cleared by a high powered committee of the state government.

The controversial properties included one promoted by former Union minister Ajit Panja and some owned by relatives of powerful politicians and senior officials.