Deposit Rs 20cr, take 6 months to clear plant of legacy waste: NGT

Gurgaon: To ensure the treatment of legacy waste at the Bandhwari plant, the national green tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday directed the state government to transfer Rs 20 crore to an escrow account from the account of the concerned stakeholders against the accumulation of the waste at the site. The amount will be forfeited, if the waste is not cleared from the site within six months, the order states.
“We direct the state of Haryana to transfer a sum of Rs 20 crores to an Escrow account with liberty to the state to recover the said amount from the concerned stakeholders in accordance with the solid waste management rules, 2016,” states the order (a copy of which is with TOI).
An escrow account is a temporary pass-through account held by a third party during the process of a transaction and an agreement between two parties. The account operates until the completion of a transaction process, which is implemented after all the conditions between the the two parties is settled.
“The legacy site may be cleared within six months. If the satisfactory progress is not made, the amount of the ESCROW account may be directed to be forfeited. The ESCROW account will be operated by the representative of the central pollution control board (CPCB),” the order said.
Interestingly, the green court has also directed the government to follow Indore’s model, wherein 15 metric tonnes of legacy (old) waste was successfully treated in 2015-16 at Devguradiya waste dumping site.
“It is definitely a positive step as the NGT has given a deadline of six months to the government to dispose off the legacy waste, which has been lying at the site for the past many years,” said Vivek Kamboj, who filed a petition in 2015 demanding reallocation of the Bandhwari waste plant from the Aravalis.