Panel slams green ministry for failing to curb pollution

NEW DELHI: A parliamentary panel has pulled up the Union environment ministry and the country’s national pollution watchdog — the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) — for their poor performance in controlling pollution and not even achieving physical targets to create air, water and noise pollution monitoring infrastructure.

The panel — parliamentary standing committee on science & technology and environment & forests — has also flagged that the ministry, which is required to address the grave and critical challenge of deteriorating air and water quality and increasing noise pollution, has not been able to fully utilise the allocations made for a scheme providing assistance for abatement of pollution.

“The ministry could not achieve the physical targets relating to ambient air quality monitoring stations and new noise monitoring stations while other targets set have been stated to be under process,” said the panel’s 283rd report on demands for grants (2016-17) of the ministry.


The report, submitted to Parliament on Monday, noted that only 244 monitoring stations could be set up against the target of 700 for the year 2014-15, while 35 new noise monitoring stations were still in the process of being set up.

Similarly, all the targets for the year 2015-16 are also “under process”. The panel —comprising 31 MPs of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha and members of all major parties including BJP and Congress — which finalised its report on May 5, was informed that an amount of Rs 1.51 crore had been spent up to December 31, 2015 out of the total allocation of Rs 4.32 crore for this programme during 2015-16.