CUTTACK: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has fixed August 30 for taking stock of the action taken by the collector of Jharsuguda on the joint inspection report submitted by the fact-finding committee following allegations of illegal extraction of morrum from revenue forest land by felling trees in Jharsuguda tehsil area by a private construction company.
The NGT’s East Zone bench in Kolkata directed the collector to file action taken report (ATR) by then. Advocate Sankar Prasad Pani appearing on the petitioner’s behalf stated that in spite of the findings, no action has been taken till date by the authorities concerned to compute penalty and environmental compensation and lodging of FIR against the violators.
Taking it on record, the bench of B Amit Sthalekar (Judicial Member) and Arun Kumar Verma (Expert Member) directed the Jharsuguda collector to file his action taken report on the affidavit within three weeks.
The report had confirmed excavation at a plot up to five metres depth and extraction 56,100 cubic metre of morrum by the private firm.