Down To Earth brings you the top environmental cases heard in the Supreme Court, the high courts and the National Green Tribunal
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has stayed all further construction of the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project (KMMTTP) road till conditions of in-principle approval of Stage I granted by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change are complied with.
The court passed the order September 26, 2022 after considering the complaints made by the Government of Mizoram.
The state government in its affidavit to the NGT said the Mizoram Public Works Department (PWD) had not implemented conditions of the in-principle approval.
The Right To Information reply from the Office of Executive Engineer, PWD, Multi Model Project Division, Lawngtlai, Government of Mizoram also mentions that the Mizoram PWD has not yet paid the Compensatory Afforestation and Net Present Value for construction of the KMMTTP road.
The reason cited is that the district collector has admitted several land passes on degraded jhum land portion which overlapped the claim made by landowners. The forest issue has also not been cleared till date.
The NGT September 26 directed that a timeline for the work of preserving embankments of the Brahmani and Mahanadi rivers in Odisha needed to be chalked out and a report mentioning the same and highlighting the work undertaken so far had to be filed.
The court order was in response to an affidavit filed by the Collector and District Magistrate-cum-Chairman, District Environment Impact Assessment Authority, Kendrapara. It had said the work had not commenced due to floods in the area.
Joint committees had been constituted to find out as to how hotels, marriage / banquet halls, resorts and guest houses in Lucknow, Agra, Meerut, Gautambuddh Nagar, Bareilly, Varanasi, Jhansi and Gorakhpur were abstracting groundwater without no objection certificates from the competent authority.
This was stated in the action-taken report on behalf of the Central Ground Water Authority in compliance to the National Green Tribunal order dated February 25, 2022.
The matter related to the condition of groundwater in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh. An application was filed before the NGT which stated that groundwater was depleting very rapidly, particularly on account of illegal and unauthorised abstraction by various hotels, marriage halls, party lawns located in the district.
A meeting was called April 4, 2022 with the representatives from Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board, Minor Irrigation Department (Ghaziabad) and Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam to decide on the modalities regarding re-inspection of hotel units and further necessary action.
After re-inspection and re-verification, remedial actions to be taken against defaulting units were provided to the district magistrate of Ghaziabad. Several reminder letters had been sent to the magistrate to take remedial action on priority, but no communication had been received till date.
Dust emissions get generated in the process of unloading of clinkers from the railway wagons to sidings and loading from the sidings into vehicles near the Palwal railway station. This was stated in the joint inspection report filed by the Haryana State Pollution Control Board to the NGT, September 26.
Clinker is the backbone of cement production and is essentially a mix of limestone and minerals.
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