Guj pollution board, Ambuja fined for toxic gases

The National Green Tribunal has fined the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) as well as cement producing company Ambuja Cements Limited in a case of leakage of toxic gases that damaged agricultural fields.

Updated on: Dec 1, 2013, 21:31:31 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The National Green Tribunal has fined the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) as well as cement producing company Ambuja Cements Limited in a case of leakage of toxic gases that damaged agricultural fields.

The NGT's Pune bench imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on the company for failing to inform locals about toxic emissions from its factory in Junagarh district after accidents in May 2011.

The GPCB was fined Rs 1 lakh for failing to respond appropriately to the accident.

The tribunal observed that the company did not take necessary measures to ensure that the local pollution control authority was informed about the accident, nor did it constitute its own committee of experts to study the impact of the accident.

The judgment was delivered recently on a petition filed by around 40 villagers.

The NGT also found the air control measures installed in the factory to be faulty and not functional at the time of the accident.

The company, however, said it had complied with most regulations and paid compensation as agreed with the affected farmers.

Holding the pollution regulator responsible for poor post-accident response, the NGT found that the GPCB's regional manager had erred in agreeing to the mutual agreement between the company and the farmers regarding compensation. The tribunal said the compensation should have been determined by a district-level committee of experts.

The tribunal also asked the board to take appropriate action against the regional manager for "negligence in conduct" of duty and to investigate the company's compliance with air pollution control measures.

The Junagarh district collector was also directed by the tribunal to verify if all affected farmers had been duly compensated as determined by the district-level expert committee.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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