CHENNAI: The southern bench of National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday issued notices to all five south Indian State governments, including Tamil Nadu, and Pondicherry, for non-compliance of Supreme Court order in displaying real-time pollution data for the benefit of the public.
The SC on February 12, 2017, had directed all State governments to make provision for an “online, real-time, continuous monitoring system” to display emission levels in public domain, on the portal of the State Pollution Control Board concerned. The State were given six months’ time (by August 2017). However, it has been more than three years, but the status of compliance has been clearly dismal in most States, said Dharmesh Shah, social activist and policy researcher, in his petition filed before the NGT.
In the petition, Shah said the Online Continuous Emission or Effluent Monitoring System (OCEMS) is designed to continuously display emissions levels from specific industries online, on the websites of the respective State territory pollution boards. The overall objective was to increase transparency in pollution reporting and to improve industry compliance. Shah requested NGT to direct the PCB to prepare a central repository of OCEMS data from and host the same on its website.