HYDERABAD: The posts of Member Secretary and Chairman of the Telangana State Pollution Control Board (TSPCB) will be on the line if they do not ensure stringent action against polluting industrial units and retrieve environmental compensation as per the ‘polluter pays’ principle.
In a strongly-worded judgement, the Principal Bench of National Green Tribunal issued directions in a petition dealing with polluted industrial clusters across the country as per the Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index (CEPI), which also include the Patancheru-Bollaram industrial cluster and Kukatpally industrial area.
The NGT reiterated that the Central Pollution Control Board, and in turn the state PCBs, should submit an action taken report to it by January 31, 2020 containing details of the number of identified polluters in all the industrial clusters across the country, the extent of closure of polluting activities, extent of environmental compensation recovered, cost of restoration of damage to the environment, etc.
Non-submission of this report will be a failure of the rule of law, rendering the existence of the pollution control board, “useless and a burden on the society”, it said.
It further added that the tribunal will have no option but to proceed against the Chairpersons and Member Secretaries of State PCBs, “by way of coercive action under Section 25 of the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 read with Section 51 CPC”.
Such action may include replacement of persons heading the PCBs or stopping their salaries till the NGT order is complied to.
The NGT also directed the CPCB to review its mechanism of giving clearance to expansion of red and orange category polluting industries inside the critically-polluted areas.
It may be mentioned here that recently the Telangana State government issued a government order allowing expansion of red and orange category industries in the Patancheru-Bollaram cluster and Kukatpally.