Order
1. We have heard Shri K.N Bhat, learned Senior Counsel for the petitioners; learned Advocate General for the State of Rajasthan and Shri Santosh Hegde, learned Senior Counsel for the Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board.
2. The grievance the petitioner makes in this petition requires urgent and alert attention of the respondents. The petitioner appears to have several industrial establishments. One of them, a plant manufacturing “H Acid”, was closed down and certain ameliorative steps were initiated in an environmental public interest litigation to remove the contaminating waste products of that industry in the area. Shri Bhat says that this task was undertaken to be done by the authorities themselves at the petitioner's cost and that the petitioners had so far paid Rs 6 lakhs towards that exercise.
3. The other three industries of the petitioner located in the same area are said to consist of a plant manufacturing edible oil by solvent extraction process and a sulphuric acid plant and associated industry. The petitioner says that these industries have been closed down at the behest of the Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board arbitrarily and in a high-handed manner. Shri K.N Bhat says that the petitioner's losses are almost Rs 27 lakhs a day.
4. Shri Bhat read to us the earlier affidavit filed by the Board in the environmental litigation to point out that on the Board's own showing, these three units were not offending any laws against environmental pollution and that the Board even without giving any opportunity to the petitioner to rectify or install any effluent treatment plant, that the Board considered necessary to be installed, which according to their earlier affidavits were unnecessary, straightaway ordered closure of the units from 4-12-1993.
5. On behalf of the Pollution Control Board, it was submitted that the position had changed since the filing of the earlier affidavits in 1991 and that these industries are discharging effluents of high acidic content and that when these effluents flow upon the sludge already collected in the area, there is an intensified reaction and pollution levels comparable to those of H Acid occur.
6. We have perused the conflicting affidavits pointed out by Shri K.N Bhat. There is some justification for the petitioner's grievance that at various points of time, the Pollution Control Board has made manifest different stands in regard to these industries with respect to their alleged potential for pollution.
7. Shri K.N Bhat also made a strong grievance that the officers of the Pollution Control Board were responsible for the disconnection of the electricity to the sulphuric acid plant which involves a continuous process and has to be closed down in a phased manner and that a sudden disconnection of electricity might lead to a serious industrial accident in the plant. In such an event, he said, the officers who have taken upon themselves this high-handed action, would be entirely responsible for all the consequences of such an industrial mishap.
8. We find that some of these grievances and apprehensions of the petitioner are not unjustified. The very stance and mood of the Pollution Control Board, unhappily, is not consistent with what is expected of such public bodies which, while discharging their duties as to the maintenance of environmental standards, are also to act in a responsible manner when they take decisions to close down running industries. The Board's earlier affidavits indicate that these industries did not have any serious pollution potential. The Board now seeks to alter its stand and has enforced strong action in closing down the industries. Such action, in the context of the present case, ought to have been preceded by adequate advance intimation coupled with proper instruction to install what, according to the Board, were the treatment equipments necessary in what the Board perceives as the altered solution.
9. We find that the affidavits and the statements made by the Board in respect of these three industries, are conflicting or at least not reconcilable with each other. At one point of time in 1991, the Board made a categorical statement that there was no potential of environmental pollution from the effluents from these plants. This presupposes that there were in position adequate procedures to treat the effluents. Later, this version is varied and the present stand is that no effluent treatment plant exists at all. There is, perhaps, a lot of explaining to be done by the Board when the matter gets properly investigated.
10. We thought of having the complaints of the petitioner as to harassment, examined by an independent Commissioner to ascertain the bona fides of the action taken by the officers of the Pollution Control Board and also to fix their responsibility. But we thought that at this stage it would be appropriate to ask the learned Advocate General, who appears for the State of Rajasthan, to have the matter examined at his instance and direct the Pollution Control Board to act more constructively and to suggest measures by which the plant could be re-commissioned immediately.
11. If the disconnection of the electricity is likely to result in the danger apprehended by the petitioners, the Board should take appropriate remedial action immediately.
12. List on 18-3-1994.
Court Masters