NGT hits out at Centre, states for doing nothing to check smog

NEW DELHI: Taking Delhi and its neighbouring states to task for not even reading its orders to curb pollution, National Green Tribunal today castigated them and the Centre for "playing a joke" on the people by doing nothing in the first five days when toxic smog engulfed the national capital region. The green panel slammed the states for not taking steps to control stubble burning and gave a slew of directions, including giving a complete mechanism to implement its directions to curb air pollution by tomorrow. Criticising the secretaries of Environment and Urban Development of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for not implementing its orders on crop burning, the tribunal asked them to read all its judgements and analyse and inform the steps they would take to implement them. "First, we want to know how many of you have read the (NGT) orders on air pollution fully and implemented them? And if you say yes, remember you are falling into a trap because we will ask you about it. If you have not read it, be clear and honest. There can't be two answers,"it asked the officers. When all of them replied in the negative, the bench asked them to go through all judgements, saying "this shows your first intention of being totally insensitive towards the environment." Coming down heavily on the states for severe air quality, the bench said, "When all this mess was going on and Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5 pollution went up above 1000, what actual steps did you take on the ground except doing meetings? "See what kind of joke you people play. You ask people who fix lights on the streets to sprinkle water with cranes to control dust pollution. Why could you not deploy helicopters to sprinkle water all over NCT Delhi? "Is it beyond imagination? Even by common sense, only water can bring down the PM levels and improve air quality. It is shocking that for the first five days nobody did anything, be it the states or the Centre. Everybody was watching and waiting for the smog to intensify," the bench said. As an interim measure, NGT banned all construction work in Delhi and NCR for the next 7 days to bring the smog under control and ordered halting operations of stone crushers and brick kilns in Delhi and NCR. It directed the municipal corporations of Delhi to depute half of their staff to go to various sites across the city to ensure that no dust pollution is caused due to construction and there is no burning of municipal solid waste. The NGT also asked Central Pollution Control Board to collect ambient air quality data for a period of one week in collaboration with Delhi Pollution Control Committee