The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought a report from the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) on incidents of stubble-burning and action taken against these occurrences.
Appearing before a Bench headed by Justice A.S. Oka, senior advocate Anitha Shenoy made an oral mention about reports of stubble-burning in the neighborhood of the national capital.
Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, appearing for the CAQM and the government, said it would enquire and revert to the court. “Yes, we want answers. We will have it Friday,” Justice Oka observed.
The court had held extensive hearings on stubble-burning and ways to stop the practice during the onset of winter.
In November last year, the top court had directed the State governments of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi to ensure that stubble-burning was “forthwith” stopped as an immediate measure to protect the lives and health of people.
Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, one of the judges on the Bench which heard the stubble-burning case in 2023, had objected to the branding of farmers as villains who deliberately set their fields on fire. Justice Dhulia had said farmers were part of the solution and not the problem.
The court had also cautioned States against reducing pollution into a “political game”.
The case on stubble-burning coming up in the Supreme Court coincides with the Haryana Assembly election.
“Pollution is not a political game where one State shifts the blame to another depending on the ruling political dispensation… This (pollution) is a murder of the health of the people. You see children in Delhi suffering from health issues... Time has come to do something yesterday, rather than postponing it. The problem requires immediate attention and monitoring, irrespective of whether the weather improves or not,” Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul (now retired), the lead judge on the Bench last year, had said.
In fact, the series of hearings in 2023 had seen the CAQM report to the top court that it had advised State governments to establish an ecosystem and robust supply chain mechanism to boost ex-situ utilisation of paddy straw in boilers and furnaces of industrial units.
Directions were issued to all 11 thermal power plants in NCR and adjoining areas within 300 km of Delhi for “ex-situ paddy straw management” through co-firing of biomass pellets/torrefied pellets (with a focus on paddy straw) in coal-based thermal power plants.
Published - September 24, 2024 05:57 pm IST
