Bombay High Court Proposes Stopping Salaries Of BMC, NMMC Commissioners For Their Failure To Contain Air Pollution Levels

The Bombay High Court on Friday criticised the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) for the failure to bring down the rising levels of air pollution in Mumbai and neighbouring areas and therefore indicated that it may on the next date, pass 'coercive' orders of stopping the salaries of the Commissioners of both Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.

A division bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Suman Shyam noted that there were no 'genuine and sincere' measures on part of the civic authorities to contain the air pollution.

When the Suo Motu PIL with respect to air pollution in Mumbai and nearby areas was called out for hearing, the bench expressed displeasure over the NMMC Commissioner who failed to file his 'personal affidavit' as ordered in a previous hearing and rather made a City Engineer to file an affidavit. The judges said that even the affidavit by the City Engineer was not 'satisfactory' and it indicated a 'belligerent disregard' to the orders of the court.

"We propose to pass an order directing the Commissioner, NMMC not to draw his salary till further orders are passed by this court," CJ Chandrashekhar recorded in the order.

During the hearing, when Senior Advocate SU Kamdar for the BMC, furnished a status report, which was perused by the judges, who found that the said report only indicated that the civic body came into action only after the orders were passed by the court.

"Only after court order, you have taken steps... What have you been doing in the last six months? The status report itself shows you were not doing anything before this court passed orders...Why these steps were not taken before? We need to pass some coercive order even against you... We are not sitting here to take stock of the situation... It is your duty to ensure it... this is not our duty to monitor status reports," a visibly irked Chief Justice, remarked orally.

To this, Kamdar defended the civic body's conduct by trying to submit that over 800 show cause notices have been issued by the BMC in the last few days to the construction sites, found in breach of the 28-point guidelines for containing air pollution.

Interjecting, CJ Chandrashekhar said, "But that's your duty Mister... You cannot be saying it like this... It is your duty to enforce the laws and ensure there is no violation... We will have to stop your (BMC chief) salary too..."

Appearing for an NGO (Vanshakti), Senior Advocate Janak Dwarkadas told the judges that it is now time to fix individual officer's accountability and also impose hefty costs on them. He cited the recent judgment of the High Court's co-ordinate bench which has fixed accountability of civic officers in the issue of 'potholes.'

"There should have been action on a war footing... people in the charge are also breathing the foul air as citizens... It's not as if they are immune... At least half of the monitors are not connected to central system... There are senior citizens, children, others suffering due to breathing the foul air, who will compensate them? The air we breathe is not getting better instead it's worsening..." Dwarkadas argued.

Meanwhile, Senior Advocate Darius Khambatta, who is also the Amicus Curiae in this case, informed the bench that even today, more than 500 construction sites were operating without installing the now mandatory sensor-based AQI monitoring device and several hundreds of such sites, with AQI monitoring devices, were not connected to the Central Dashboard.

The bench irked over the situation, expressed how they are spending hours during the hearings of this specific matter and yet nothing substantial is being done by the authorities to control the situation.

In this, advocate Gulnar Mistry, appearing for one of the intervenors pointed out how the air quality measured on the day of Mumbai Marathon (on January 18) was way different than the data of the BMC. She urged for a resource plan to combat the Air Pollution in the city as early possible at least before the conditions here become hazardous like that in Delhi.

When Kamdar rebutted saying the data of the BMC was correct, CJ Chandrashekhar quipped, "Mr Counsel your officers are not living in some alien world... You all are also breathing the same air as we or the citizens."

The Chief Justice therefore, asked the civic authorities and also the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) to come up with some strong and workable solution as the court cannot be just accepting status reports and monitoring the situation with authorities breaching orders.

When the matter was called out after the lunch break, the bench said it will hear the matter in detail on January 27 and pass detailed orders.

It cautioned the civic chiefs of both the BMC and also the NMMC that since it has already recorded the proposal to stop salary of the NMMC Commissioner, it will not be recalling the same.

"We also maintain certain discipline. Whatever we have recorded we will not recall. Whatever we held against him (NMMC Chief), we will hold the same against you (BMC Chief) too. This is just a proposal indicating to you. We are not stopping the salaries forthwith but we will consider this on the next hearing," the CJ orally told the counsels.

Further, the bench told MPCB that it should also be taking some effective measures in containing pollution levels. It told the MPCB and also the BMC to seek orders of the court to exercise extra statutory powers so that it can impose hefty fines between Rs 5 lakhs to Rs 5 crores, especially on the construction sites.

"In all socio-economic offences, this is one of the measures. Violators must know crime does not pay. Thus, think of imposing such hefty costs that they will think twice before violating law," the CJ said while adjourning the hearing.