Air pollution news: SC slams Centre over stubble burning, says ’Environmental Protection Act has become toothless’

The Supreme Court on October 23 slammed the Union government for making environment laws ‘toothless’, stating that the provisions of the CAQM Act related to penalties for stubble burning have not been implemented.

A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka, Ahsanuddin Amanulllah and Augustine George Masih said the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Act of 2021 (CAQM Act) was enacted without creating required machinery for implementing the provision to curb air pollution.

“Union of India has not created machinery. Environmental Protection Act has become toothless. You have got rid of punishment replaced with penalty by amending Section 15 and the procedure to be followed for imposing penalty cannot be followed,” Justice Abhay Oka said as quoted by LiveLaw.

On this, Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati who appeared for the Centre stated that Section 15 of the CAQM Act, which addresses penalties for stubble burning, will be enforced effectively. She mentioned that the necessary regulations would be issued within 10 days.

In addition to this, the top court also strongly criticised the Punjab and Haryana governments for not taking any action against people for stubble burning. It said that if these governments were truly interested in implementing the law there would have been at least one prosecution.

Supreme Court told Chief Secretary of Punjab that “Around 1080 violators FIRs were registered, but you have collected nominal fine from only 473 people. You are sparing 600 or more people. We will tell you very frankly that you are giving a signal to violators that nothing will be done against them. This has been for the past three years.”

Study on stubble burning incidents in Punjab and Haryana

A new study found that stubble burning incidents in Punjab and Haryana decreased since last year, However, Delhi is still facing seasonal air quality issues. Today, on October 23, Delhi recorded air quality in ‘very poor’ category at 349 as of 7 am.

Between 2019 and 2023, both Haryana and Punjab – key regions for stubble burning – experienced fluctuations in fire incidents. Notably, there were significant declines in 2022 and 2023, as highlighted by Climate Trends, an environmental research organization. As per the Climate Trends analysis, the fire counts in Haryana decreased from 14,122 in 2019 to 7,959 in 2023 while in Punjab, fire incidents peaked in 2020 at 95,048 but dropped to 52,722 by 2023.

(With inputs from agencies)