HYDERABAD: It has been more than a year since the National Green Tribunal directed all States to prepare District and State level Environment Plans and constitute monitoring committees. However, Telangana has not even bothered to make the Environment Plan for a single district till now.
The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) was tasked by the NGT in 2019 to coordinate with all States and submit reports on the implementation of its order. As per the report submitted by CPCB to the NGT, apart from Telangana and four other States - Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, and Sikkim, all other States have prepared District Environment Plans (DEP) for at least one district. Once the DEPs are prepared, the State Environment Plan can be prepared by the States, followed by an environment plan at the national level.
Also, as per the CPCB report, it did not receive any information from Telangana, like in the case of most States, regarding the formation of monitoring committees. The Central Pollution Control Board has asked the NGT to direct Telangana and other States that haven’t taken up the work yet, to complete it in a time bound manner.
States on track
A few States developed DEPs for all or most of their districts which include Karnataka which made DEPs for all 31 districts, Maharashtra (all districts), Tamil Nadu (37 of 38), and Madhya Pradesh (52 out of 55). DEPs have been prepared for 220 of the 739 districts across the country, as per the report