In its bid to control dust pollution in the city the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) has issued stern warning to National Building Construction Corporation’ (NBCC) asking it to immediately stop all construction and demolition activities at Pragati Maidan or “face the music”.
SDMC has asked NBCC to immediately stop such activities or be ready for the action under DMC Act 1957. The civic body also directed NBCC to produce “sanction plan” obtained by it from the competent agency for working on the aforesaid project.
SDMC Commissioner Dr Puneet Kumar Goel said that SDMC has also stared ground level monitoring on a continuous basis and to ensure that a common object to reduce pollution level is achieved and air quality does not deteriorates further. He added that SDMC is committed to strictly enforce the directions of the Environmental Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority’ (EPCA).
A communication has been issued to stop construction activities as NBCC ignored earlier request to this regard and NGT’s guidelines, a senior SDMC official said.
Taking serious note of the directions of the EPCA, the civic body has deployed 62 water tankers for sprinkling on roads. “The sprinkling of water was undertaken in about two dozen places including Batala House to Okhla head works, Okhla SLF, and Defence Colony, Jal Vihar Lajpat Nagar, Sunder Nagar, Bhairon Marg, RK Puram Sector 1 and 4, he said.
The official further said that it has also increased the frequency of mechanized cleaning of roads, encourage providing electric heaters to security stall to avoid burning in open to contain the effect of winter, advise people affected with respiratory problems to stay from the polluted places and stop the use of diesel generators sets.
Meanwhile, as part of measures to control pollution, the building department of North Delhi Municipal Corporation has issued 1188 challans this year in which 12 challans were done in September alone for a number of violations in compliance with National Green Tribunal orders and collected a fine of Rs 2934900. However, SDMC has collected Rs 55,205 by imposing fine on 20827 violators this year. Over 950 challans were issued between September 1 and October 11 under ‘Solid Waste Management’ rule and Rs 1, 68,600 collected as fine.
The Commissioner had also chaired a high-level meeting on Friday to chalk out an action plan to overcome the situation arising out of alarming levels of air pollution and directed officials to deploy all mechanical road sweepers and water tankers for settling down the dust.