The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has directed chief secretaries of all states and union territories (UTs) to be present in the Tribunal on various dates between March and May 2019, with a progress report of what they have done about municipal solid waste management, air pollution and river pollution among other issues.

In a first, NGT has clubbed several significant environmental issues which were being heard separately by the Tribunal like air pollution, river water pollution, illegal sand mining, polluted industrial cluster and solid waste management and directed chief secretaries of all states to review the progress on dealing with these issues.

An NGT bench headed by Chairperson, Adarsh Kumar Goel specified 36 meeting dates with 36 chief secretaries between March to May 2019.

It has directed the chief secretaries to acquaint themselves with the status of compliance with solid, plastic and bio-medical waste management rules; status of functioning of committees constituted by National Green Tribunal comprising of former high court judges or senior bureaucrats to oversee implementation of NGT orders; status of action plans to remediate polluted river stretches; status of committees overseeing the implementation of the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP); status of action plans to deal with illegal sand mining and fines collected from erring industries under the “Polluter Pays” principle. “It is made clear that chief secretaries may not delegate the above function and the requirement of appearance before this Tribunal to anyone else. However, it will be open to them to change the date, by advance intimation by email at NGT website,” the order published on Wednesday said.

First Published: Jan 25, 2019 00:07 IST