NEW DELHI: Highlighting the detrimental effect of usage of petcoke, a PIL has been filed in the Delhi High Court alleging that though Delhi banned use of furnace oil and pet coke in 1996, these continued to be used in the NCR by aluminum industries, cement factories, dyeing units, paper mills, brick kilns and ceramic manufacturers.
Taking note of the plea, Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought responses of the Centre and AAP government on a PIL which claimed use of petroleum coke with sulphur content of more than 1.2 per cent by industries.
A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao also issued notice to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), its subordinate bodies in Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, as well as the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) seeking their replies to the plea which claimed that use of petroleum coke (pet coke) of higher sulphur content than 1.2 per cent makes the ambient air quality “toxic” and was “harmful for human beings”.
The petition by the city resident Vinay Kumar Dubey has said that even as the Environment Ministry put restrictions on import of pet coke into NCR due to the high pollution levels here, recently BIS allowed use of pet coke with suplhur content of up to 3.5 per cent by aluminum industries and the CPCB and Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) concurred with the decision without first carrying out a scientific study of the impact.
The petitioner has claimed that increasing the upper limit would lead to rise in amount of pollutants released into the environment by such industries.