Fourteen months after they assured to clean up their act, as many as 37 industrial units in the industrial town of Vapi in Gujarat have been found flouting pollution norms.

Indian pollution control authorities could take a cue from the US, which has issued the first-of-its-kind standards for regulating mercury emissions from thermal power plants. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), issued by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on December 16 last year, will be effective from December 2014. The EPA was supposed to probe mercury emissions from power plants under the Clean Air Act (CAA) which came into effect in 1990, but the regulations have been released only now.

It's been over four decades since India's first indigenous steel plant was set up in Jharkhand. But the scene near the Bokaro Steel Plant or BSL (the plant was earlier called Bokaro Steel Limited) is no different from what can be seen in other parts of the country—farmers protesting land acquisitions for large industrial hubs and real estate development. People whose land was acquired for the plant can be seen wielding hockey sticks and holding protests. The latest round of protests is against a new steel plant being set up by the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), which manages the plant, jointly with the South Korean steel giant, Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO). The joint venture is a Rs 15,000 crore project which initially will produce half a million tonnes steel annually.

On january 13, the Union environment ministry imposed restrictions on new industries in critically polluted areas. The ministry had assessed 88 industrial areas across the country and identified 43 as critically polluted. Projects to set up new industries or to expand the existing ones in these areas have been put on hold till August 2010, after which the ministry will review the situation.

The Union government has released a pollution index to help it decide where new industrial units are to be allowed and which areas need cleaning urgently.