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.
“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.
In addition to this, the top court 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 tells 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.”
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