The Principal Bench of the National Green Tribunal in New Delhi has slapped a penalty of ₹10 crore on the Kerala government for its failure to check the indiscriminate pollution of the Vembanad and Ashtamudi lakes, listed as Ramsar sites.
The Bench, led by its chairperson Adarsh Kumar Goel, said in its order dated March 22 that the penalty imposed on the basis of the ‘polluter pays principle’ had to be deposited in a ring-fenced account to be operated under the authority of the Chief Secretary.
The penalty of ₹10 crore had to be utilised for conservation/restoration measures by preparing an action plan to be preferably executed within six months. It would be open to the Chief Secretary to collect the amount from erring officers/ departments/ industries/ individuals in accordance with the law by an appropriate mechanism and hold erring officers appropriately accountable departmentally or by way of prosecution and also to proceed against other entities, railways, local bodies, and industries [responsible for the pollution] within three months, it said.
The Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Environment, had submitted a report before the tribunal stating that 1,176 notices had been issued by the local bodies concerned to the owners of flats, establishments, hotels, resorts, houseboats, and industrial units for dumping untreated wastewater into the waterbodies. A total of 1,939 illegal outlets into the canals/drains leading to the lakes had been closed. A total compensation of ₹1.7 crore had been imposed on the violators, it said.