New Delhi

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 on the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) for an inordinate delay in transferring funds to the Delhi government’s forest and wildlife department.

Deprecating what it described as a “widely prevalent tendency” of non-compliance with its orders by offering “lame excuses”, the tribunal said the reasons cited by the DPCC for the delay were “unacceptable”.

In November 2023, the NGT had directed the DPCC to release Rs 8 lakh collected as environmental compensation from four illegal stone-crushing units in Nilothi village to the Department of Forest and Wildlife under the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD). The funds were meant to be utilised for afforestation activities in the area.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava, along with expert member Afroz Ahmad, in an order dated January 8 and made available on Tuesday, noted DPCC’s submission that the delay was caused due to shifting of its office.

“We find the reasons given for the delay of more than one year in the transfer of the amount by DPCC to the Department of Forest and Wildlife, GNCTD, to be wholly unreasonable and unacceptable,” the bench said.

The tribunal observed that non-compliance with its orders constituted an offence and that even the chairman and member secretary of the DPCC were liable to be prosecuted for such violations.

“However, taking a lenient view, we do not consider it appropriate to direct such prosecution. Yet, to curb the widely prevalent tendency of non-compliance with the orders passed by this tribunal and offering lame excuses for the same, we consider it necessary to impose appropriate costs on DPCC,” the order said.

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Accordingly, the NGT directed the DPCC to deposit Rs 50,000 as costs for non-compliance, noting that the delay had also caused inconvenience and hampered timely remediation of environmental damage.