Gujarat pollution board fined in waste leakage case

The National Green Tribunal has slapped fines on a company --- Ambuja Cement --- and pollution regulator Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) in a case of leakage of toxic gases affecting agricultural fields. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Dec 1, 2013, 16:33:25 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The National Green Tribunal has slapped fines on a company --- Ambuja Cement --- and pollution regulator --- Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) --- in a case of leakage of toxic gases affecting agricultural fields.

In a judgment, the Pune bench of the tribunal imposed a fine of Rs five lakh on the company for failing to inform the locals about release of toxic emissions from its factory in Junagarh district after accidents in May 2011.

The leakage had resulted in subsequent damage to agriculture land in the nearby areas affecting earnings of the locals.

The company did not take necessary expedient measures to ensure that the local pollution control authority was informed about the accident; neither did they constitute their own committee of experts in a time- bound manner to study the impact of the accident, the tribunal observed in its judgment delivered recently.

The tribunal hearing a petition filed by 40-odd villagers also found the air control measures installed in the factory to be faulty and not working at the time of the accident.

The tribunal held the regulator responsible for poor post accident response and found that the regional manager of GPCB had erred in agreeing to the mutual agreement between the company and the agriculturists about the compensation to be paid in the farmers. It said the compensation should be have been determined by the district level committee of experts.

Imposing a fine of Rs one lakh on the pollution board for failing to initiate quick response, the tribunal asked the board to take appropriate action against the regional manager for “negligence in conduct” of duty and investigate to find whether the company has complied with air pollution control measures.

As regards to compensation, the tribunal directed the district collector of Junagarh to verify whether all the agriculturists in the said impact zone of 3 km had been duly compensated as per the formula derived by the 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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