New NGT chief to tackle over 3,000 pending cases

NEW DELHI: The new chairman of National Green Tribunal (NGT), Adarsh Kumar Goel, will have to deal with a backlog of over 3,000 cases.

Goel, who took charge on July 8, will take up first a landmark petition on Delhi’s

air pollution

filed by advocate Vardhaman Kaushik in 2014. He is likely to take a call on one of the most contentious interim orders in the case this Tuesday—whether new diesel vehicles can be registered in the capital.

By the month-end, the Yamuna cleaning-up petition will be before him.

A bench headed by former NGT

chairperson

Justice Swatanter Kumar, who retired in December 2017, had on December 11, 2015 directed that no new diesel vehicle would be registered in Delhi till January 6, 2016.

The tribunal had ordered the

Delhi government

not to register any diesel vehicle because of their high particulate matter (PM) emissions. It also asked the Centre and the Delhi government to stop procuring diesel vehicles for their departments. The bench stated that there would be no renewal of registration of over 10-year-old vehicles in Delhi.

Since then, several miscellaneous applications have been filed by individuals, corporations and government departments seeking permission to procure and register diesel vehicles. However, the ban stayed.

Goel has recently asked for a case brief and a synopsis of earlier directions. “We have already submitted a compilation of earlier orders. The chairperson will be briefed on the diesel vehicle registration issue and the aspect may be resolved on Tuesday so that there is clarity on whether diesel vehicles are to be registered in Delhi,” said Sanjay Upadhyay, advocate for Kaushik.

The compilation of orders on air pollution suggested that NGT has passed over 100 directions—burning of agricultural residue prohibited, plying of over 10-year-old diesel vehicles banned in NCR, construction activities to be undertaken under stringent precautions to cut dust pollution, strict penalty on burning waste, and setting up an emergency response system based on PM 10 and PM2.5 levels in the national capital region (NCR).

While banning the registration of diesel vehicles, NGT had cited a report by

Central Pollution Control Board

(CPCB), which observed that each diesel vehicle causes pollution as much as 24 petrol cars and 40 CNG cars. But the Centre, particularly the Union transport ministry, had maintained that these vehicles contribute to less than 1% of PM2.5 emissions in the city. But the case is yet to be closed as it has branched out into several aspects of air pollution.

The other landmark case that Goel will hear has been filed by Yamuna activist Manoj Mishra on restoring and cleaning the river. Mishra filed the petition in 2012, but the issue, too, soon branched out into several difficult aspects of the Yamuna clean-up, including inter-state agreements on Delhi’s share in the river water. On January 13, 2015, an NGT bench gave a 100-page judgment on dealing with the pollution, ecological flow and restoration of the Yamuna floodplains.

The judgment stated that a decentralised sewage treatment network consisting 55 sewage treatment plants (STPs) would be set up to ensure each drain discharging into the Yamuna carries treated waste water. It also said an environmental flow had to be maintained in the river in consultation with the Haryana government. None of these has been implemented yet, only a few tenders for STPs in

Burari

have been floated by Delhi Jal Board.

Goel may dispose of some long-pending cases soon, said lawyers at NGT. Many such cases are also being heard by the Supreme Court and the high court.