Above: A heap of garbage piled up in Geeta Colony, East Delhi (file picture). Photo: Anil Shakya
In its effort to control the spread of dangerous diseases such as Dengue, Chikungunya and others in the National Capital Region the Delhi High Court bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Anu Malhotra had asked renowned environmental experts Sunita Narain, Almitra Patel and M C Mehta to draft bye-laws. The court is also reviewing the preventive steps taken by the government towards this.
On the last date of hearing, on September 19, the court had accepted a set of draft bye-laws on solid waste management, framed jointly by local authorities and environmental experts, which call for introduction of user fees for municipal services among other things.
The Court had ordered framing of the draft bye-laws after environmental experts had claimed that a major challenge faced in solid waste management was lack of such provisions.
On September 19 the court had asked the Delhi government to place the bye-laws before the Lieutenant Governor so that they could be officially notified, urgently.
The court had observed in an earlier hearing that vector-borne diseases had spread as garbage was not being managed properly. Two PILs were filed in the court, urging it to ask civic agencies and other bodies to pull up their socks and ensure that these diseases do not spread.
A video was shown to the Court on the prevailing scenario and Court found that there was no improvement and the municipal bodies were still to gear themselves to the task of garbage segregation and reduction. While lashing out at the corporations, the Court observed that poor waste management resulted from the mushrooming of unauthorized colonies in the capital.
While the original draft had already been approved, further developments on that were needed and on Wednesday (October 25) Narain, Patel and others informed the court that it will take one more week to complete this.
Bench has granted the permission and matter was adjourned November 15.
—India Legal Bureau