New Delhi, Dec 5 (PTI) The Delhi High Court today askedLieutenant Governor Anil Baijal to positively notify the SolidWaste Management bye-laws, framed jointly by the city's civicbodies and environmental experts, within three weeks.
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice CHari Shankar noted that "despite repeated directions" by it tonotify the bye-laws, it has not yet been done.
The court said the rules were framed by the municipalbodies and approved by their heads and, without anyone havingraised any objection or apprehension against them, the bye-laws ought to have been notified by now.
"In our view the Lieutenant Governor is the competentauthority to notify the bye-laws. Let the notifications of thebye-laws be positively effected within three weeks. We wantthe notifications before us," the bench said and listed thematter for further hearing on January 16.
The court had on November 15 given two weeks time tonotify the bye-laws and place it before the bench.
The high court had on September 19 accepted the draftbye-laws which called for introduction of user fees formunicipal services, among other things.
Besides introduction of user fees for municipal services,the bye-laws also provide for enforcing segregation of wasteat source such as in the households and housing societies,strengthening of waste collection, storage, transportation andprocessing systems and imposing of penalties for littering orviolating the rules.
Under the bye-laws, the fees and penalties will see afive per cent increase per annum.
The court had ordered framing of the draft bye laws afterenvironmental experts like Sunita Narain, Almitra Patel and MC Mehta, had claimed that a major challenge faced in solidwaste management was lack of such provisions.
The court was looking into the issue of solid wastemanagement as it was of the view that garbage and lack ofcleanliness contributed to the spread of vector-borne diseaseslike dengue and chikungunya.
The view was expressed by the court during the hearing oftwo PILs by lawyers Arpit Bhargava and Gauri Grover, who hadsought directions to the municipal bodies and otherauthorities to take steps to prevent the spread of dengue,chikungunya and malaria. PTI HMP SKV PPSARC.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.