Kolkata: Heavy penalty for all local bodies for waste mismanagements

KOLKATA: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has ordered all local bodies in Kolkata Metropolitan area (KMA) to pay penalty of Rs 10 lakh per month (with population more than 10 lakh) and Rs 5 lakh every month (population between 5 and 10 lakh) for non-compliance of environmental rules related to air and water pollution because of waste mismanagement and a series of orders passed by the Supreme Court and the green tribunal.Significantly, in 2020, all urban local bodies in Bengal will go to election.
Chief secretary, the order said, will have to appear before the court on the state’s action plan and compliance records on August 4, 2020. The date was mutually agreed upon by both the NGT and chief secretary. Besides the local bodies, key government departments like irrigation and public health engineering will be brought under this compensation regime, if norms are found to be violated by them, the order said.
The penalty will be effective from April 1, 2020. The NGT has also made provision for adverse entries in to annual confidential report (ACR) of the CEOs of the local bodies and responsible government officers for non-remediation of legacy dump sites — detoxification of wastes through bio mining at dump sites where assorted wastes pile up for several years — by March 30, 2020. Besides, other local bodies need to pay up Rs 1 lakh as compensation.
Significantly, as per the order passed by the NGT bench of chairperson Adarsh Kumar Goel, judicial member S P Wangdi and expert members Nagin Nanda and Siddhanta Das, an environment monitoring cell has to be set up in the office of the chief secretary for coordination and compliance of environmental issues. The state has to submit the quarterly compliance report to the court with a copy to Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
The CPCB will be the custodian of the penalty and the money will be used exclusively on environment improvement projects, the order said.