Uttar Pradesh Government and State Public Pollution Board have been asked by the Lucknow Bench of the High Court of Allahabad to state the steps they have taken to bring down the Air pollution level. The direction was passed on 24th November 2020.
Advocate Radhika Singh had filed a PIL seeking complete ban on the firecrackers, keeping in view the deteriorating air quality. However, firecracker ban is not applicable to places with considerably good/moderate air quality.
Following the PIL, Division Bench of Hon’ble Justices Pankaj Mithal & Saurabh Lavania passed a direction asking the concerned authorities to file counter affidavits. The counter affidavits have to be filed within six weeks. After filing the counter affidavits, two weeks of time is further given to the petitioners to file rejoinder affidavit.
The court directed:
“Learned Standing Counsel as well as learned counsel for the U.P. Pollution Control Board are directed to file counter affidavit clearly indicating the measures or the schemes they propose to undertake for maintaining clean atmosphere and what measures are being taken on the issue of reducing air pollution”.
The court had further decided to club this instant PIL with another PIL CIVIL No. 28170 of 2017 (Anagh Mishra v. Union of India).
