NGT penalises Himachal Chief Secretary, pollution board Member Secy

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, August 4

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has imposed a penalty of Rs 10,000 each on the Chief Secretary and the Member Secretary of the State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) for their failure to file a compliance report on action taken against sewage treatment plants (STPs) that have been found polluting the catchment of major rivers in the state.

The Principal Bench of the tribunal comprising Chairperson and Justice Prakash Shrivastava, Justice Arun Kumar Tyagi and expert member Dr A Senthil Vel, while issuing the orders on July 25, noted that the details of the STPs comprising their installed capacities and utilisation had not been disclosed individually as directed in the previous orders. Instead their total capacities and utilisation had been disclosed. The Chief Secretary had not disclosed even the mode of disposal of treated sewage. The tribunal had given three weeks to the respondents to submit the requisite information.

The tribunal stated that, “The Chief Secretary of Himachal state has not filed any report in compliance with the earlier directions. The counsel for Himachal has filed one index along with a three-page unsigned document. There is no report enclosed along with the document. Hence, we find that the previous order has not been complied with.”

The tribunal noted that as per the compliance report on the STPs operating in the catchment areas of the Sukhna khad and the Ashwini khad in Parwanoo filed by the SPCB, the NGT found them not complying with the norms prescribed in April 2019. Consequent upon this, an environmental compensation should be imposed upon the violators. Though the board contended that it had filed the report a day earlier, it had failed to be file it within the stipulated time, thus prompting the NGT to seek a fresh report on the environmental compensation imposed on the project proponents of the defaulting STPs.

Last year, the NGT had directed the Chief Secretary to file a report on the STPs operating in the catchment of nine rivers, which were bearing the brunt of pollution from untreated sewage.